A little jewel

AS a marketing manager with a knack for getting noticed, Sian Foster has certainly done her bit to put Yorkshire on the map. Having successfully attracted national attention for the Yorkshire Museum’s innovative exhibitions, Sian helped launch the acclaimed Royal Armouries Museum in what was then a little known part of Leeds. She went on to sell Yorkshire’s famous Taylors of Harrogate speciality teas throughout the world, travelling to Taiwan, Singapore, China, Japan, Hong Kong and all over Europe to introduce the product to top hotel and restaurant chains.

As an accomplished promoter of the county’s charms, it is hardly surprising that Leicestershire born Sian, who was educated in Norfolk and studied at the University of Sussex, has chosen to settle in rural North Yorkshire, where she lives in an 1800s period cottage with her 12-year-old daughter Ella. Having also trained in interior design, Sian, who now runs a jewellery, clothing and accessories shop and website, has created a calm and relaxing haven for them both.

After years spent travelling all over the world, working long hours to a hectic schedule, the single mum, who designs her own ethically sourced jewellery, wanted to simplify her life and spend more time with her daughter. “That was the catalyst for setting up on my own,” she says. “When Ella was three years old, I was away for two or three weeks at a time, then back for a couple of weeks and away again. I just couldn’t be away for that length of time anymore.”

Sian, who first started making and selling her own jewellery as a student, completed a silversmithing course in York when she was pregnant. “I got so big, I had to be more sedentary,” she says.

Changing her job with Taylors so that she was UK-based still didn’t give her the flexibility she wanted once Ella started school and she started thinking about creating her own brand of jewellery. While looking for ethically sourced metals for her designs, Sian found the ideal silver beads she needed, made by the Karen hill tribes in Thailand, and discovered a York-based charity working to improve people’s lives there.

The Karen Hilltribes Trust was set up by Penelope Worsley in memory of her son, Richard, tragically killed in a car crash, who had worked with the tribes on his gap year and Sian, who studied Third World development at university, was keen to help the project. She started incorporating a lot more Thai silver into her designs. She went on to open her shop and website, Ella Georgia, selling clothes, handbags and other accessories, as well as her jewellery.

“I never conform to what is in fashion, but wherever I go, people have always asked me where I got my bag or shoes and guys at work always asked for advice on what to get their wives,” she says. “The belts, scarves and handbags I sell in the shop are a continuation of that.”

What started out as an attempt to make the most of a quieter life didn’t last long. Sian soon rose to national prominence, being named one of the UK’s Top 100 Businesses in 2013, meeting Chancellor George Osborne and Shadow Secretary of State for Business Chuka Umunna at 10 Downing Street. She was even invited to speak at the Conservative Party Conference as a role model. “They wanted to hear my story because I set up an ethical business in the recession and I was also a female single parent,” she says.

Having made a success of her business, Sian now hopes to develop her jewellery designs further and plans to travel to Bali and India to find workshops to produce her stunning pieces. Inspired by her father, an architect, she has always had a keen eye for design, with a particular passion for interiors, but decided to concentrate on tourism and marketing after studying the subject for her master’s degree.

Her first job, relaunching the renovated 5-star Grand Hotel in Brighton after the 1984 bombing, was particularly high profile and she went on to work for prestigious concert halls and arts festivals in Glasgow before moving to head up marketing at the Yorkshire Museum. It was during this period that she did interior design work in her spare time, while studying for a diploma over two years at evening class. “I started doing things for family and friends and word spread,” she says.

Sian also bought and renovated properties of her own, from a Victorian white glazed brick town house in Harrogate to an old village school house and a three-storey town house by the river in Boroughbridge. After renovating her fourth property, she needed to downsize. “Our last house was too big,” she says. “Most people want bigger and better, but it’s just more to look after. I wanted somewhere small and cosy where I could grow vegetables and take the dog for a walk in the country from the door.”

This was the first cottage she found online when she first looked two years ago. The three-bedroom former farm dwelling needed electrics and plumbing work. “I swore I would never do up a house while living in it. It was a nightmare,” says Sian. But she had a clear design vision – a Scandinavian feel, with white walls, using shapes, colours and textures as points of interest. She painted nearly everything white and off-white, contrasting with the old, dark beams and creating a flow, with clean lines and a feeling of space. “I used ordinary white matt emulsion,” she says. “It’s the first time I haven’t used posh paints.”

In the living room, she ripped up the carpet and sanded the wooden floor, staining it pale grey, and installing a log burner with simple black slate surround in the original fireplace. Sian makes a statement with her elegant, stylish accessories, including an Argentinian cow skin rug, Mongolian cashmere cushions, lamps and carefully chosen works of art.

It took her weeks to peel off the layers of tiles and lino in the bathroom, before sanding and filling the floor and varnishing it a stunning black.

Sian’s kitchen is strikingly simple, all white with clean lines and little clutter. There are just a few carefully selected items on display and no cupboards at eye level, to maximise space. “I decided if something didn’t fit into the cupboard space it has to go,” she says.

Outside, she established a small patio, with a vegetable garden stocked with potatoes, courgettes, salad leaves and spring onions. “I love the light that runs right through the house, from front to back,” Sian explains. “And the space is amazing, it really works. We’re always having friends round.

“Our home is small but perfectly formed. There is a simplicity of life here. When we put the log burner on and cosy up together, it feels like the rest of the world doesn’t exist.”

W: ellageorgia.com