Both Lady Sarah and Sam Chatto have carved out impressive careers in the art world. Lady Sarah inherited the artistic sensibility of her father, Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, studying at the Camberwell School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools. In 1988, she won the Winsor & Newton Prize, and her work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions. Described by Patrick Kinmonth as ‘growing like plants flowering, or landscapes excavated over time from remembered, indistinct horizons,’ her work ‘takes us into a profound contemplation of the world she seeks to know and the method she has mastered.’
It is a passion that she passed down to her son, Sam Chatto. After studying Art History at Edinburgh University, he found himself ‘completely uninspired by my three-month job working in the commercial art market’. Taking matters into his own hands, the 29-year-old now describes himself as ‘a British artist and maker currently working in clay to create functional and sculptural wood-fired ceramics, from my home and studio in West Sussex.’
After training as a potter at the Northshore Pottery, he travelled to Japan in 2023, where he apprenticed with the renowned master Yagi Akira. In the years since, he has showcased his work at Ceramics Brussels Art Fair and RAM Galleri in Oslo. This April, he enjoyed a milestone first solo exhibition at the Sokyo Gallery in Kyoto. Sam’s long-term girlfriend, Eleanor Ekserdjian, is also an artist, and engagement rumours have abounded ever since she was invited to spend Christmas with the royal family at Sandringham. The pair can often be found supporting each other at National Gallery events or backstage at London Fashion Week. Earlier this October, she and Sam joined Flora Vesterberg for an artists’ soirée at The Courtauld in London.