Conscious purchasing is a factor at the forefront of our minds at Rio Nuevo.
It’s what drives our transparent and shortened supply chain, and our direct trade principles.
Our ethical sourcing model is of paramount importance to us, ensuring we prioritise our farmers and their welfare when making our chocolate. So when it comes to Christmas gifting, we want to promote those principles and mirror those same ethics.
To do just that, this year we have collaborated with the extremely talented local ceramicist Jake Boex, to create a gift pack with 100% traceability and with quality and respect for the makers at its forefront.
We commissioned just 30 of Jake’s mugs, which he hand makes in his studio in Porthleven, and stamped each one with the word ‘Conscious’, hidden as a subtle and small reminder to the user.
Each mug is gift boxed with one 250g box of our 60% Cloud Forest Hot Chocolate, meaning that the contents of each box is made and grown by people we have direct relationships with. We have met them, we have watched them at work and we have boxed that together into something quite special. This is something we are extremely proud of, and we hope you like it as much as we do.
From Cornwall, Jake is an experienced ceramist, passionate about the environment. His work is directly inspired by the changing landscape around him, and his draw to the ocean.
Sharing our passion for the environment and the well-being of the planet, he makes the perfect partner for our Conscious collection.
“The art of wheel-based contemporary ceramics came to me at college, I knew that this was what I would do. It took a PhD in environmental science to discover that my passion for the natural world lay in the immediate experience of nature, rather than in the secondary intellectual filter that we often attribute to understanding.
"Today, I create ceramics that have a connection to the landscape, aspiring to convey this immediate experience of nature.
My work includes domestic wear to sculptural pieces based on evolving themes. Currently, the experience of walking the South-west coast path ‘finding stillness’ has inspired weathered textures of rocky cliffs merging with ideas of a thread, sutra or suture.”
Jake’s studio is located just off the high street in Porthleven, in The Gue.
It is open to visitors form Tuesday – Saturday, 10am to 1pm and also by appointment.