An on-line publication/exhibition for the Potteries Museum and Gallery, Stoke-upon-Trent, (2004/05).

Having been given access to the extensive stored collections at the museum it was my intention to explore this extraordinary treasure trove and develop my reactions as new work. I had expected to cross-pollinate between the Fine Art, Crafts and Natural History collections. However, on my final visit, and deep in the farthest corner of a basement packed solid with the Community History collection, I found these orphaned inkwells. They had been gathered up from old school desks in some local classroom, packed unwashed, and stored away for half a century. I found their simplicity and honesty genuinely moving, each one frozen in time, sealed in it’s own little history of dried ink, or cracked and discoloured glaze; each one as unique as the individual children who had used them all those years ago.

Despite the riches available in the museum’s other collections I found myself transfixed by these beautiful little objects, and felt compelled to record and archive them. I used this close-up scrutiny and contemplation as a means to focus and foster my own inklings of innocence, possibility and potential. At times it felt like the resultant poems were the inkwells gift to me, reminding me of our inherent and magical desire as children to imagine and create.