Rob Leigh-Bramwell of Bramwell Brown discusses recent collaborations with the Ashmolean Museum and National Trust for Scotland

Rob, time flies – we last spoke to you in 2024 and it seems you have been busy. How is 2026 shaping up for Bramwell Brown?
2026 started fast with a launch on the 25th of January – Burns Night – with a clock celebrating Scotland’s favourite son, Robert Burns. And we’ve been pretty flat out since! We’re hoping for a great year that will also have quite a few ‘firsts’ along the way, including our own exhibition in London in the Autumn.

I know you have entered into a few more collaborations following on your partnership with Aardman. One of these is with The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Can you tell us more about this and the design process behind it?
The Ashmolean is an absolute treasure trove of artworks and historic objects. Their collection of Japanese Edo-era Ukiyo-e prints really caught our attention and after initial prototyping, we knew we could create not just a special Weather Art Clock – but also a Tide Art Clock. We took several of Utagawa Hiroshige’s prints and formed five engaging weather scenes for a Weather Art Clock. And then Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa was brought to life by our Tide Art Clock’s elliptical mechanics. We’re absolutely thrilled with both.

Another recent collaboration was with the National Trust for Scotland. Tell us more about this.
Yes! The Robert Burns clock I first mentioned earlier is indeed our new Caledonian Heritage Weather Art Clock in association with the brilliant National Trust for Scotland. They approached us about using their large collection of both Scottish art and Robert Burns’s original diaries to create a clock that celebrates his life and work. Like all our Weather Art Clocks, it has five scenes but the usual barometric “Very Dry” to “Stormy” forecasts have been replaced with Robert Burns’s own “Yon sun”, “Green grow the rashes-o”, “Wind can blaw”, “Rattling showers” and “Tempest roar”.

Terrific. Bramwell Brown are a very proactive company marketing-wise. How do you market your products and how are you building a relationship with your audience?
We have quite the marketing ‘mix’ you might say, but a lot of it starts with the basics as 30% to 40% of our sales are word of mouth. So, the products need to speak for themselves first and foremost – hence a desire to partner with organisations with assets that can really inspire. Beyond this, the marketing is still quite ‘human’ rather than mass media. We work with gifted influencers on social media and do things like sponsored events and product placement, all in an attempt to drive newsletter sign-ups so we can get across what we’re all about over the long term.

How are you influenced by consumer feedback? Have you implemented any learnings from consumers into your design and product development?
Yes, we listen a lot. There isn’t really any distance between contacting the company and speaking to us both directly. We are always keen to hear feedback or people’s ideas. While an idea might not apply immediately, it certainly plants seeds for the future. One thing we occasionally have to temper enthusiasm on are requests for mind-bogglingly complicated clock mechanisms!

You are also proactive in the ‘real world’ marketing-wise, exhibiting at events like Grand Designs Live. How do these sorts of shows work for you?
We exhibit clocks throughout the year with quite a few different establishments. And we’re always looking for more well-visited places that our clocks would fit well into. Grand Designs Live is this – but turbo charged. We were invited to put two clocks in the centre piece of the whole show with 35,000 people walking past it over the course of a weekend. We’re pretty sure they’re going to catch people’s attention!

From a design point of view, where do you go to get inspired?
We’re lucky enough that the UK and London especially is full of inspiring shops, establishments and museums. We both get a real kick out of the kind of machines you can see at Novelty Automation in Clerkenwell, for example. It brings out the inner childhood wonder in us both. But, beyond this, we are engaging more and more with the ‘Art’ in our ‘Art Clocks’ and how the clocks can, in effect, take the place of a framed picture on a wall at home, as well as being a clock.

You work a lot with artists and illustrators. Is there any advice you could give to up-and-coming artists in regards to how they can make themselves “visible” to companies like yours?
The exhibition shows are certainly worth being involved in. We often go round them and pick out artists who we want to follow up with – even if we don’t have time for a chat on the day. Then there is putting good time and thought into applications. We find some of our open calls are answered with copy and paste. The responses don’t need to be long – the opposite, perhaps! – but showing you’ve researched our previous work or have an idea you want to explore makes us sit up and take notice.

Going back to the collaborations you have been involved in, what makes a brand attractive to you?
As said, we’re very focused on word-of-mouth sales and making sure the product speaks for itself. So it’s really important that we don’t just develop a ‘clock’ but also a ‘story’ that goes along with it. This background needs to explain why we as a business are passionate about what we are designing and then making at our workshop. This creates excellent engagement with the followers and even more content to put in front of them.

And finally what new releases are you most looking forward to for the rest of 2026?
We’d be spoiling things if we said! We’ve got a handful of artists and one brand that we’re currently shuffling dates around with. It’s a bit of a moving feast but what we currently have in the pipeline really makes us happy!