Leah Jelf

Ceramics & Glass (MA)

Bedtime Tiles are a series of 513 inlaid floor tiles made using traditional medieval encaustic techniques within the larger Tiles and Tribulations project. Referencing the decorative language of 13th – 15th century inlaid priory tiles, this work reimagines these historical artefacts through a contemporary, autobiographical lens. Each tile features iconography drawn from my personal life and experiences; everyday objects, emotionally charged motifs, and symbolic forms, collating a visual archive that merges the devotional with the domestic. Manifesting as a personal reliquary, a vessel for memories of home, bedding, poems, jewellery, and the people closest to me. By employing historically accurate processes, the work establishes a tangible connection to the past, while simultaneously subverting its conventions. Bedtime Tiles exist as a way to depict intimate narratives that speak to memory, identity, and emotional inheritance, playing with tone and texture to consider how the past imprints itself on the present, particularly in relation to trauma, memory, and sentimentality. The use of repetition and floor-based installation reflects the original function of priory tiles yet transforms them into a site of contemporary storytelling. This engagement with history is not just nostalgic, but reflective, using material permanence to explore the instability of memory and the passage of time. These tiles address the lingering presence of trauma and the desire to soften it, offering a gentle yet striking visual language rooted in both personal experience and collective craft traditions. Through the integration of past and present, the work seeks to preserve what might otherwise remain unseen, reframing fragility as something resilient and quietly enduring.

About

About the Artist

Leah Jelf (b. 2003) is a British colour-blind ceramicist, born in Germany and currently based in London. Her practice explores themes of sentimentality, identity, and emotional inheritance through contemporary sculptural and illustrative ceramics. Creating tactile and often achromatic works that confront feelings of nostalgia, homesickness, and personal memory.

Jelf’s practice draws from her own life, transforming the delicate into the durable to preserve fragile, often private, experiences as lasting, physical artefacts. Her ongoing interest in domestic rituals and archival impulses is expressed using traditional craft processes. By combining these traditional methods with modern imagery and autobiographical iconography, she creates contemporary ceramic works that blur the line between personal relics and collective historical objects.

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