I grew up in quite an alternative household and didn’t have many toys or a television until I was much older. Nature became my way of making sense of the world. I’d pick up stones, sticks, old broken bones – anything that was around me that I could forage.
Most of us will remember spending whole days on the beach looking for things to bring back and put in a box. It's one of our first interactions with sculpture and material and shape. The geometry and the palette of the natural world is a real source of inspiration in my work. I use a lot of canvas and clay and felt, which I think comes from the same sense of being attracted to these elemental materials.
What’s pictured here is a drop in the ocean. Me and the kids collect wherever we go, and I find things on every surface, inside and out. It's that wonderful naive eye to the world that I love. There's no hierarchy to it, and no transaction involved. It’s very difficult to identify what it is about something that makes you want to take it away, but as a designer it’s my job to try and recreate some of that in whatever I make.
What's everyone reading?
My husband and I have collected a lot of design over the years. In my twenties and thirties I amassed great collections of glass and ceramics and textiles, but they no longer feel precious to me. It was the act of collecting, the act of finding them that was the important part. I’ve let go of all of these design objects, and have found myself returning back to the natural world. The things that remain are imbued with memories and connections to places and people. I think I'm probably picking up the same things that I did when I was five. t-o-o-g-o-o-d.com
