Rachel O’Connell is a multi-media, sustainable marbling artist, leatherworker and educator, with over 35 years’ marbling experience, who launched ROCWORX in 2021/2022.  She has since exhibited in national museums and galleries, such as The British Museum, Manchester Art Gallery, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Brantwood Museum (John Ruskin), and in Devon in MAKE Southwest and Thelma Hulbert Gallery. Her Suminagashi ink marbling surface patterns were selected by the interior design team for Grand Designs Live 2026 exhibitions at exCel London and NEC Birmingham. Her work is now sold online and in select independent shops and galleries in Devon.

Marbling is an endangered heritage craft, a surface pattern created using ink or paint flicked on water. Rachel marbles on paper, clay, wood, and textiles, including leather, to showcase the diversity of this surface pattern.She makes books, paper art, home décor including lampshades, cushions and hand marbled wallpaper panels, as well as wearable art, hand stitched leather goods and marbled leather and wood jewellery. As a sustainable maker, she repurposes paper received from tea companies and theatrical textiles from ballet companies and theatres in London, to make jewellery, accessories, and paper art, with proceeds going to the food poverty charity, Trussell UK.

Rachel tutors marbling, bookbinding and leatherwork at West Dean Art College, The National Trust Heritage and Rural Skills Centre, Oxford Summer School and in galleries, schools, colleges, universities, craft events and community groups. She also runs small, focused classes in her own studio in rural South Devon.