Leaf panel, raku fired, 50 x 65cm

The panel was conceived when I was digging in our compost heap on the morning of the first frost in autumn several years ago. As the spade cut into the pile it revealed a hidden riot of colour starting with the glistening frosted leaves, then some greenish-brown, some copper and eventually some blackish decayed leaves from the previous year.

The leaves are modelled on those from our Sevenoaks garden and are individually fired using several techniques and a range of glazes before being assembled.

Autumn leaves in Knole Park, 50 x 50cm, glazed and unglazed leaves.

For a month or two each year the newly fallen leaves in Knole Park, Sevenoaks, make a carpet rich in greys, tans and browns, the natural colours of many fired clays.

Ex libris wall panel, porcelain, 50 x 65cm.

Having spent most of my working life in book publishing I have always been surrounded by walls of books. However it was as a result of a design course run by Brigitt Head that I began to look at the patterns and textures which remained when the colourful graphics were removed. Rachel Whiteread was the other stimulus. Her wall of books, in negative space, was just one of many of her works which have given us all a different way of seeing our environment.