Trust The Current

From a tiny London pottery studio to Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula, the encounters, friendships and quiet instinct that became The Current.

For years, strangers came through the door of my tiny London pottery studio. They arrived from everywhere, with some visiting London for a few days and others had lived in the city for years. Around the table there were couples, families, groups of friends, office teams and people who came alone; actors, authors and people whose lives were completely different from mine, all with their hands in the same block of clay. They had booked a pottery experience, yet before the clay had dried, our conversations had usually wandered far beyond it.

I found myself writing down the name of the restaurant I thought they should try that evening, sending them towards a small gallery or a market they might otherwise have missed, and explaining which familiar London sights were worth the queue and which ones I would continue wandering past. Often those conversations continued long after the workshop, and sometimes I would receive a message years later, remembering the afternoon or asking where they should go on another visit. At the time, I thought I was building a pottery business however looking back I can see that something else was beginning to take shape around that little studio table.

The people who came to make

I founded London Wildflower in 2017 and began hosting small pottery sessions from a miniature studio in London. There was clay, a working table, a growing collection of tools and enough room for people to sit together and make something with their hands. Airbnb Experiences had just arrived in London, and I was fortunate to become one of its early hosts. The platform gave a young business like mine a remarkable kind of reach, finding travellers who often had only a handful of days in the city choosing to spend part of that time with me. That never stopped feeling like a huge privilege. The workshops led to opportunities I could not have planned: massive corporate gatherings, private events and encounters with exceptional people from the other side of the world. But the part I loved most was the exchange itself, with people arriving as guests, but the table and pottery activity making conversation easy. While their hands were occupied, they told stories about where they had come from, what they had seen and what they were hoping to find in London and in return, I shared my version of the city. Airbnb Experiences showed me that visitors were looking for more than an activity, they wanted the perspective of a person who lived there. They wanted the small recommendations that rarely appear at the top of a search result and the feeling, even briefly, of being let into someone else’s world.

When the table moved online

When the pandemic arrived, the London Wildflower had to change almost overnight. I moved the workshops online and began sending the experience out in pottery kit form instead. Each kit contained air-dry clay and the tools needed to begin, and I also wrote a short book explaining how to use the material, with techniques and projects people could return to. It was a practical response to an impossible moment, but it also revealed how much people needed to get creatice. DIY make-your-own kits saw an extraordinary surge that year and people joined from their kitchens and living rooms, sometimes separated by countries and time zones, finding their way back to one another through their hands.

London Wildflower grew with that movement. In 2021, I was selected as a finalist in the Pivot Entrepreneur of the Year category at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards. The recognition meant a great deal, but I also began to feel that the part of the experience that mattered could travel, rather than depending on one studio or even one city. It felt that what really mattered was depended on creating the kind of environment where people could settle in, start making and see where it took them.

Clay to Costa Rica

After having two children and living in London for many years, my family and I made the decision to move to Costa Rica. I carried on working with clay and through The Pottery Journey, my work became more closely entwined with the landscape around me. Sea creatures began appearing more often in my ceramics with forms that seemed to belong somewhere between the ocean floor and the shore. In private pottery experiences around Santa Teresa, I encouraged guests to use natural forms such as leaves from the jungle to ridges of a shell or a piece of coral already washed ashore.

Once again, people came to the table while travelling and once again, the conversation moved beyond the clay. I found myself sharing the tide pools I loved, the people I thought they should meet and the corners of this part of Costa Rica that had made it feel like home.

The idea that kept returning

Living in different places and travelling widely has introduced me to some of the most remarkable people in my life. When I think about the journeys that have stayed with me, it is rarely the famous sight that returns first, instead I remember sharing lunch with a local family I met in Kyoto. I remember riding through the vineyards of Mendoza with a local caballero. I remember seeing Barcelona through food with someone who knew the city from within. In each case, it was the person that changed the place for me, they gave context to what I was seeing, they noticed what I would have walked past and they told the stories that made a landscape, a meal or a street feel special. The best experiences were not cut-and-paste tours, they could only have happened with that particular person in that particular moment.

The idea for The Current had been gathering quietly through all of this. Airbnb Experiences first showed me the power of a platform built around people sharing what they know and over time I began imagining a more considered version: private experiences in shaped around the people themselves. Costa Rica has introduced me to the mist incredible people, from marine biologists, to cacao makers, explorers, artists, cooks and conservationists. People whose knowledge and point of view could offer far more than a list of things to do. I wanted travellers to choose not only the activity, but the person they felt drawn to and from there, we could create a day around the place that they know so intimately.

Trust the current

The name arrived before I fully understood where it had come from. At first, I thought The Current made sense because of its connection to my husband Mark’s company, Ripple, with both words suggesting movement through water, one thing passing into another. Only later did I notice a piece of artwork I had made the year before with three eagle rays moving across it beneath the words ‘trust the current’ (see image above).

I had made the piece without any idea that the phrase would become significant and even after choosing the company name, I had not consciously connected the two. When I saw it again, I had to wonder whether the image had been sitting somewhere in my mind all along. Either way, the idea was already there: pay attention, follow what is moving beneath the surface, and trust where it leads.

Returning to the table

One of The Current’s private experiences in Costa Rica is my own: Private Pottery in Costa Rica. Around a shared table in Santa Teresa, guests learn simple hand-building techniques, taking their cues from the forms and textures they notice in the landscape around us. It means I can continue sharing something I love while meeting more of the people passing through this part of the world - people who want to spend time with someone who knows and loves this place and can help them see it a little differently.

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Discover Nikki’s World

Discover Private Pottery in Costa Rica, my experience in Santa Teresa