I moved on to making hats for a doll who'd lost her hair, crocheted a hat for my father (he still has his hair), and sewed myself outfits during a schoolteachers' lengthy strike. In high school I fell in love with knitting in color and designed intricate patterns based on islamic tiles and Klimt paintings. I studied photography and film, which led me to Edinburgh College of Art where I majored in graphic design and animation.

I worked for the Names Project UK AIDS Memorial Quilt, sewing together panels and traveling with the quilt to events. I briefly studied printmaking in Belgium. Returning to the world of dolls I made a series of figures that relate both to traditional dolls and to contemporary sculpture. I designed a collection of luxurious quilts, each one exploring a single color in depth. Inspired by a summer fortnight at Haystack Mountain School of Craft, I knit a woolen house.

In 2000 I moved to New York, attracted to the city and its possibilities. I became assistant to my aunt, artist and jewelry designer Jessica Rose and found myself making jewelry again.

For five years I apprenticed with Jessica, immersing myself in the materials and language of exquisite wearable art. She encouraged me to design jewelry, and my pieces joined hers in galleries and stores such as Takashimaya New York and Browns of London. In 2006 I launched the self-named jewelry line which you see on this website.

All these experiences are related. Whether knitting stitches, sewing fabric together, or building a necklace from pearls and wire, I am working with single units, adding and subtracting them to create shapes, the materials providing me with a palette of textures and contrasts. I think in terms of the architecture of a piece, striving for structural integrity and a seamlessness between the material and the form.

I'm inspired by growing things, geometric shapes, typography, ancient symbols, scraps of lace, shells and driftwood found on the beach... Following the thread of an idea leads me from one design to the next, frequently in an unanticipated direction, always learning from the making itself.

In 2008 my love of nature led me north to New York's Hudson Valley, to live in a 19th Century farmhouse in the village of Ellenville. I work in my studio surrounded by mountains, a vegetable garden, and an old barn with racoon paw prints on the walls. At night the deer visit and leave tracks in the snow.