Julia Burns has elevated humble potato printing into an art form – and we can’t get enough of her Red Hen Original designs. MAXINE GORDON visits the artist at her Helmsley home.

DISBELIEF is the usual response when people discover Julia Burns’s much-loved animal pictures are made using a method most of us perfected in primary school.

We first meet at a pre-Christmas fair in Harrogate, where shoppers are snapping up her rustic prints of British wildlife, including hens, geese, badgers and owls, spotting them as perfect gift ideas.

“They’re all made by potato prints,” she explains, shouting over the hubbub around her stall. “Yes, potato prints, like what we used to do at school.”

Intrigued, we arrange to meet again – this time at her spacious studio in the garden of her home in Helmsley.

“At first, I was reluctant to let people know they were potato prints,” says Julia. “I thought it would devalue people’s perception of my work.”

Julia, 51, who grew up in County Durham and attended art college in York before studying at The Slade in London, is also an abstract artist. Her large colourful canvasses are seemingly a world away from the wall-friendly potato prints straight from animal farm.

But Julia quickly realised she had discovered a niche market.

“We have all done potato printing at school but nobody yet has come up to me to say they do potato printing as a living.”

For Julia, the switch from abstract painting to potato printing was a case of needs-must.

“We were credit crunched,” she says as she busies away making a cafetiere of coffee. She reels off the saga of how her husband switched jobs from wine into property just as the bubble burst in 2008.

The story of upset, uprooting and downsizing – from a large home in Osbaldkirk to a small cottage that had been in the family in Helmsley – is told in the straight-forward way of people who have come through an ordeal and resurfaced intact on the other side.

As the family – husband Simon, son Harry and daughter Rose – settled into their new home, Julia struck on the idea of making accessible, affordable art prints using the humble spud. She had a hunch it might make money after a one-off potato print she made for a charity auction sold for £720.

She said: “I thought if somebody was prepared to pay £720 for this, there might be a little business here.”

And so Red Hen Originals was born, named after a potato print she did as a student in 1985 – of a little red hen for a Christmas card.

Her hen prints remain best sellers, alongside barn owls, badgers and an image of wrens on some pussy willow set against a blue background.

In her studio – a two-storey wooden structure, big enough to house a small family and designed by her late father, the architect Anthony Burns – Julia shows us a work in progress. It is of some ducks – ready for an Easter release – pristine white birds with bright yellow beaks and a muddy green background.

The studio is full of other Red Hen Original products and prototypes. There are cushions, aprons, tea-cosies, notebooks and stationery sets, all displaying Julia’s distinctive animal prints and the Red Hen Originals logo.

She is ploughing her efforts into turning Red Hen Originals into a brand; one she hopes might be snapped up for a life-changing sum.

Already she has had a range of mugs sold by Whittard and is selling a limited edition of her prints in John Lewis.

She is refreshingly honest about her motives and aims. “My idea is to do this well, get it on the high street, then sell it.”

Not only would it provide a “pension pot” she says, but allow her to travel and, importantly, get back to her abstract work.

She knows she has struck it lucky – her affordable potato prints (which start at £24.50 for a limited print or £48.50 for an original potato print) have arrived at a time when the public’s appetite is for the simple and homely.

“We are right in the middle of a DIY bubble, with the success of shows like Bake Off and Kirstie’s Homemade Home,” says Julia. “The desire to salvage things and use them again really hits the spot and continues to hit the spot. It’s become obvious to me that people love the prints, they love the fact they are home-made and that each is slightly different.”

Find out more at Redhenorginals.com