Foxy Pheasant, created by Amanda Harris-Lea, brings together her passions for the sporting countryside and country home interiors.
Foxy Pheasant is an edited country home collection with a sporting edge.
Farm to Feathers The Foxy Pheasant brand
Following the death of her father after a long term illness and weeks later the birth of her second daughter in 2015, Amanda Harris-Lea a former Land Agent and Farmer, decided to set up a new business to channel some of the energies created by these major life events.
Whilst dealing with grief, adjusting to the birth of a new baby Amanda also struggled to adjust to her limited mobility that faced her postpartum. This period of unforeseen box rest as a result of an older spinal injury complicated by pregnancy and Arthritis, left Amanda unable to get out on the farm or work her much loved team of gun dogs. Not one to give in easily and with the support of friends, she dug deep and immersed herself in mother hood and while the baby slept, worked to create her brand “Foxy Pheasant – Country home styling”, an online interiors emporium for the sporting country home.
“Foxy Pheasant, for me is testament to a strength I did not know I had. I turned the whirlwind of energy created of grief and skeletal pain into a positive focus. Don’t get me wrong, I did not ignore the fact that I was grieving nor my duties as a mum to all of my girls but there were times when it was not good for me to dwell, and project Foxy gave me a focus and helped me through. I would often sit painting or sanding a piece of furniture, and as I worked I gave myself time to process, plan and shed a tear or two. I sit here now nearly four years on wondering how on earth I did it.”
“Initially I started out buying and selling vintage items and up cycling furniture. This gave me the chance to experiment and find my look. I then moved to working with other small companies collecting together items to form an edited interiors collection for the sporting country home. I had great fun meeting other small business owners (many of them multi tasking mums too) and built my look using some amazing products and meeting some equally amazing people.”
“ I then started creating collections from vintage fabric finds. It was great fun finding and then creating soft furnishings to form collections that complimented my vintage and other items.”
Amanda initially made all the items herself but demand soon meant that she had to delegate to local specialist seamstresses to free up her time to concentrate on the marketing and social media side of things. The business grew in an organic way from a small concession in a back street bazaar to what it is today.
Building on the online sales of her home ware and fabric collections, Amanda also now offers a styling and design service to home and business owners. Foxy Pheasant specialise in providing a holistic country look that lets the biography of both the building and its inhabitants shine through, making each project truly unique.
“We provide a bespoke styling service to clients, supplying and styling to reproduce a country house look that is enough without being too much.”
New for 2019 – Pheasant Fabrics
With an established online store and a bespoke home styling service under her belt, Amanda has chosen to take Foxy Pheasant to another level and develop her own unique fabric range.
Amanda has worked with a Cheshire based designer and manufacture to produce her new range of fabrics, inspired by the beautiful plumage of Pheasants and Partridge. The designs have been beautifully created using photographic images taken by Amanda herself.
For now the range is limited to 4 fabric designs in small and large scales available on a linen union blend. It is planned to launch a larger variety of fabrics and a wallpaper range early in 2020.
Core Values
“Foxy Pheasant was created from the heart, I wanted our brands values to reflect our personal values too.”
Our packaging ethos is simply the basic principles of Recycling – REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE .Firstly we REUSE any packaging we receive in our own stock orders to package our customers’ orders. If we must purchase new packaging products this is done with a conscious effort to REDUCE our plastic consumption, where possible we will always purchase paper based products over plastic. Once our products reach you the customer we hope you too will REUSE or RECYCLE the packaging products.
We do not purchase large postal boxes specifically for our customer orders, we REUSE cardboard boxes from other local businesses and then wrap carefully in recycled brown paper.
We use our local village post office to send all our post and parcels, something that we feel is important to the sustainability of our rural community.
We love to work with other small businesses, we work hard to find other artisans with different products that we think fit with the Foxy look and ethos.
We can always work with small companies and when we cant we look to UK based family firms.
All of our products, our styling and our principles come together to make Foxy Pheasant a brand that really reflects our personalities.
Our Heart
Foxy Pheasant likes to raise awareness and funds for charities we hold close to our heart.
These Charities are :
The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust
Paul Sartori Hospice at Home care
Our style is honest and authentic to country life. We mix old and new, grand and humble, rustic earthy and vintage charm to produce a home look that is enough with out being over styled. It is our wish that our values shine through our brand.
