‘Cross-hair Screen’

Made especially for Sotheby’s Contemporary Decorative Arts Exhibition in 2001 at the request of curator Rachael Barraclough. Around four months in the making the ‘Cross-hair’ screen comprises over two thousand handmade bone china discs mounted between sheets of toughened glass. Cutting the ‘cross-hair’ motif into the wafer-thin discs is a risky process. Bone china is an incredibly ‘short-bodied’ clay prone to crumbling and splitting when worked by hand therefore good practice suggests avoiding tears or cuts in the raw clay – as these splits, even if repaired, can re-open whilst drying or during the firing process leading to significant losses. Deliberately disregarding convention however, allowed me to emphasize the fragility of the bone china discs, whilst placing them under toughened glass magnifies their surface details slightly, as well as heightening the effect of there being something delicate and precious safely encased within.

Similar ‘cross-hair’ discs feature in the small freestanding panel on this page and the architectural scale Chapel Doors made for the Minster School.