Our Story
Welcome to Harem Living, an interdisciplinary creative studio born from the collaboration of two artists Harem and Jack. They specialize in creating unique artworks and interior spaces inspired by natural forms and ancient cultures, with clay being their central medium.
Together they form a formidable team for whom no project is too big or too small. Harem & Jack’s calm, laid-back approach, positive energy, and fastidious eye for detail radiate through their designs to create timeless artworks and interior spaces that are an homage to life.
Harem & Jack met whilst working together on a project in 2020, during which their creativity clicked. Within a year they had started Harem Living and began work on a number of interior projects. The organic process had begun and with their shared passion for creation, it didn’t take long before they founded a ceramic studio on the Fillery family farm in Mpumalanga, where they both now reside.
Since then, they have exhibited and sold their works in various local galleries, design fairs and luxury interior decor showrooms, such as Roche Bobois, OKHA and Maison & Objet.
Harem has been an artist all his life translating his eye not only onto canvas and clay, but also into the beautiful, organic spaces which he has been creating for over a decade. Having lived a life full of colour and adventure across France, UK, India, Kenya, Germany, South Africa and Spain to name but a few, his experiences have honed his skill and passion for art, design and decor.
The origin of man and his place in the universe has always been a strong theme in his work while this young self-taught artist continuously pushes his own style to compliment his sometimes very complex themes. A one year apprenticeship in Kenya to the Italian artist Armando Tanzini inspired his now very often monumental scale canvasses and murals.
Having been a full-time artist since he left school Harem has built up close relationships with many of his international patrons who include Richard Branson, the UAE Sultanate and many other private collectors in the USA and Europe. With a keen understanding of himself and his obsessions Harem has lived a life full of colour and adventure, at times in reclusive solitude and at other times in the larger cities of the world.
Jack grew up in the rolling countryside of the southwest of England and through his early career based in London as a travel photographer he had the opportunity to explore the globe extensively. His instinctive sensitivity to design and scultpture has its roots in a family lineage of adventurous collectors, a keen photographic eye, and a fascination with the natural world.
Although Jack has travelled afar, he has always with one foot firmly planted on his family’s nature reserve in the Mpumalanga mountains of South Africa, where he now lives with his wife Dominique, and architect, and where the Harem Living Studio resides.
His exploration of and fascination with the natural world in which he is immersed forms a fundamental basis for much of his design and artwork, inspired by the endless organic forms, colour and motion which abound.
Jack’s foundation in ceramics came through classes with the well-known Lowveld potter Antjie Newtown, and he continues to explore methods and techniques from different areas and epochs in his work.