I’ve been making things for as long as I can remember. It started when I discovered my grandfathers toolbox when I was about 5 years old. I was hooked on the idea that these simple hand tools could be used to make something totally new and I was away. I fixed things and made things and I learned so much about materials and processes. A dozen years later I went to art college to study sculpture under David Horn and Tony Carter and I spent some time assisting David Nash in his studio.
I have continued to draw and to make sculptures from stone, brass and bronze, based on my fascination with ancient navigation instruments. My sculptures have always had the sense that they had once had a practical purpose and value in their utility, but that the exact method of use has been lost or forgotten.
My lamps are practical, useful objects but they are sculptural too. The inspiration for them comes from my studies and drawings of Victorian machinery and architecture; practical things, but designed with a sculptor’s eye. I will often incorporate ‘found’ objects. Sometimes these things have been designed, but just as often their beauty comes from their being formed for their function. Whichever, they will carry some evidence of their history of usage in their form or in the scars that they wear.
The people who have bought one of my lamps tell me that they value them for their uniqueness and the knowledge that it was made specially for them, but they also see them as sculptures, useful ones.
I am married to the painter and writer Loupe Cooper and we have one daughter who is a gifted and innovative maker in her own right.