Ambrose and the Art of Chaos: Jamb’s Stop-Motion Collaboration with Suzy Parr
In an unexpected fusion of fine craftsmanship and animation, London antiques house Jamb has released a series of short stop-motion films that bring a mischievous Bengal cat named Ambrose into their meticulously recreated interiors. The shorts were created in collaboration with Suzy Parr, a veteran director and animator best known for her work with Aardman Animations (Financial Times).
Each short film, lasting between 12 and 29 seconds, turns Jamb’s classical 18th- and 19th-century aesthetic into a stage for feline mayhem. The first installment, Push, shows Ambrose casually knocking over a miniature Grand Tour vase. The follow-up, Lights On, Lights Off, finds him climbing wall plaques to flick a switch repeatedly. Upcoming releases include The Bed, Hunter, and Home, each depicting new micro-dramas of household destruction (Financial Times).
Co-founder Charlotte Freemantle says the idea grew out of her desire to refresh how Jamb presented its world. “We’ve always shown perfect English country-house settings,” she told the Financial Times. “But it started to feel stale. I wanted something playful. Ambrose is part of our story—he nonchalantly walks around our home knocking objects from the fireplace.”
The project marks a reunion between Freemantle and Parr, who first met in art school during the 1990s. Parr, who has spent three decades at Aardman working on features and shorts, saw the collaboration as a natural extension of their shared appreciation for handmade artistry. Filming took place at Aardman’s Bristol studios, where the production team built scaled-down replicas of Jamb interiors with painstaking precision.
The Ambrose puppet was engineered by Kev Wright, whose steel armature allowed for expressive feline movement. Parr needle-felted the outer coat herself to achieve a lifelike texture. The miniature sets were built at approximately 35 percent scale by Jes Parr and Claire Baker, with Beth Quinton finishing each piece to resemble authentic marble, stone, and wood. Composer James Sigha provided the score, layering gentle humor and atmosphere over the handcrafted visuals (Financial Times).
For both collaborators, the project celebrates tactile creativity at a time when artificial intelligence dominates conversations about visual media. “In a world of AI, this could never have been made any other way,” Freemantle said. Parr agreed, noting that “stop motion is painstaking, but that’s what gives it quality—you feel the maker behind it.”
The short films are being released across Jamb’s Instagram and the company’s newly redesigned website, where they have quickly resonated with both design and animation audiences. Freemantle and Parr have already teased future installments—this time featuring the Fisher family’s dog, Edie, who makes a cameo paw appearance in the final scene of the most recent short.
Together, they’ve transformed a high-end antiques brand into something warm, humorous, and refreshingly human—a miniature world where elegance meets chaos, one paw swipe at a time.
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