Marbling Artist + Leatherworker

Rachel O’Connell is a multi-media marbling artist and educator.  Rachel combines traditional tools, heritage-craft techniques and a contemporary design aesthetic, to create home decor, lighting, stationery and wearable art.

Marbling is an endangered heritage craft, on the Red List of Endangered Crafts 2023.  It is a surface pattern where inks and paints are floated on the water surface, a pattern made using simple tools and then transferred to paper or textiles.

Rachel is a sustainable maker, with a zero-waste philosophy.  She has created a circular design range, using offcuts from marbled leather to create jewellery, bookmarks, key fobs and cable tidies.  Rachel works with companies like the Royal Opera House, repurposing their theatrical textiles and ballet slippers, saving them from landfill, to make small items to be sold, with some of the sales proceeds going to charity.

Since launching her business, ROCWORX, in 2021, Rachel has exhibited and sold work in Manchester Art Gallery, Dulwich Picture Gallery, MAKE Southwest, and at Craft Festival.  She has work in small independent shops and galleries in Devon and in national museums, including The British Museum, Brantwood Museum and Weald and Downland Living Museum.

Rachel is a tutor at West Dean College and also teaches in schools, galleries and museums and for National Saturday Club and Creative Dimensions Trust.