When public expressions of self-love are on trend and the championing of nudity in popular culture is rife, Emma Low fits in perfectly. Armed with air-drying clay, an array of paints and a sharp attention to detail, the Scottish-born Leeds-based artist has turned crafting ‘tit pots’ into her full-time job.
What started off as a homemade Christmas present for a then-boyfriend has grown into a hugely successful business over just a few years. However, this backstory doesn’t reflect the current nature of her work: “I think that’s kind of opposite to what Pot Yer Tits Away Luv has become. That was very much for the male gaze but that’s actually not at all what I’m about”. In fact, she claimed the pot back when they broke up: “I was like ‘hell no, you’re not keeping that artefact!’”, she laughs. Today, Emma has 74.6k followers on Instagram and her pots sell out almost instantly.
In early 2017, Emma started making the pots with a wider audience in mind, before eventually quitting her former job. This transition wasn’t so easy, Emma recalls, as someone with no background of working on their own: “I was super overwhelmed and completely overworked. I’ve never worked for myself before; I don’t have any experience of running a business”, she says. “I’ve always had someone above me telling me what to do, so it was a massive shock to the system”.
This, in turn, took its toll: “A lot of people work under pressure well and I’m not one of those people—I find it really disorientating”. Though Emma’s work is laced with humour and light-heartedness (read: selfies with self-deprecating captions, not to mention the brand’s name in itself), she is not shy about discussing her own sometimes-turbulent mental health. Her solution? “I just have to listen to what my body is saying and try to do the best I can”.
As a twenty-something with no formal art education, it is impressive that Emma has managed to singlehandedly transform her hobby of crafting boobs out of clay into a full-time, self-run business. When I ask how she finds being her own boss, Emma flits between the pros and the cons: she likes the independence and the creative freedom but she admits the challenge of it. “It is hard. I have an existential crisis at least once a month”. Improving her time management and finding a new studio space has worked wonders for her motivation, meaning Emma can continue her work more efficiently and productively.
Intricately detailed and often tailored to specific individuals, Emma’s pots are deeply personal. Blemishes, piercings and body hair are noted without censorship. Whilst her business has grown in popularity, this sense of intimacy has not suffered at its expense. The trick? Maintaining an honest relationship between the customers and herself. Whilst Emma believes this trust is inherent due to the nature of her audience, she also follows a series of steps to ensure that confidentiality is kept. Emma is the only person who ever sees the photographs of her subject and they are deleted swiftly after the pot is completed, for example. Emma’s up-front social media presence also helps strengthen her credence: she often posts videos of herself “Talking shit” or recklessly shutting down trolls.
The internet has drastically widened Emma’s audience, but it’s not all dandy being an artist in an age of omnipresent social media; from having to navigate technical problems like ‘shadow bans’ to putting up with mansplaining in her DMs. Thankfully, the latter, along with general negativity, remains minimal and debates that ensue are mostly healthy ones. Despite the occasional criticism, Emma’s work has certainly helped to reduce the stigma attached to naked bodies. “Everyone’s body is worthy of recognition, regardless of what it looks like”, she says frankly. She’s keen to represent boobs that aren’t often shown in the mass media, especially not in a positive light. From asymmetrical nipples to cellulite, the pots reflect boobs across the board. Her followers help her to widen this scope, Emma explains: “There’s always someone who will send me a message like ‘I’ve not seen you do this’ or ‘have you thought about doing this?’”. Emma enjoys this interactive aspect and writes a list each month with new suggestions to try.
A particularly rewarding commission Emma recalls involved a live session with someone who had had breast cancer and subsequent reconstructive surgery. The subject came to Emma’s house to have her chest emulated in clay before her, instead of just providing a photo. Emma looks forward to following this approach more in the future: “Now that I’ve said it and you’re gonna print it, I’m gonna have to do it”, she laughs.
Despite her tremendous success, Emma worries about the trajectory of her craft: “Sometimes I don’t think it’s managed to stay fresh at all—I’m like, ‘is this stale now?’”. Though her follower count and diverse archive of pots clearly demonstrates otherwise, Emma suggests that this is a feeling shared by all creative people and makers. She also expresses a fear of subscribing to the patriarchy and nourishing a capitalist (and inherently misogynistic) system which profits from someone’s insecurity. It’s refreshing to see that there is someone so caring and self-aware behind it all.
In the future, Emma looks forward to going beyond her tit pots, making ceramics with new materials. “I want to be more experimental, but I’ve been saying this for years”. In the meantime, though, she is trying to work on her own life beyond the business, exercising a thoughtfulness and sensitivity that is so central to her ethos.
Safi Bugel