the nineties
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about me

early years
in the 50's
in the 60's
in the 70's
in the 80's
in the 00's
in the 01's
afm022.jpg I continued to design for the people with whom I was already working. Some exciting new things came along. I designed some Christmas ranges for Department 56 in America and for Gisella Graham in England. I went to New York fairly regularly to gift fairs, to see my work exhibited, I met the people who ran The Metropolitan Museum gift shops, and they asked me to design for them. I was very thrilled about this. Matthew had his own paper company designing decorated stationary. Most of the work he did himself but I did quite a few small boxes and covered books and greeting cards. I did flowery things and cats, neither of which he particularly liked drawing.
2-079.jpg I had become rather associated wth cats in my designing life, and in real life too. I have always had at least one cat, and usually white. Cats seemed to appear on my tea towels. So, in 1993, I started working on a book commissioned and edited by Will Schwalbe in New York: A Guide to England Through a Cat's Eye. It was also published in England, and called A Cat's guide to England. I truly loved doing that book, and it was quite a success. The cat went to all my favourite places that a cat would enjoy too. Fish shops and hedgerow hunting grounds. It was printed in America, at home and in Japan.
2-084.jpg Matthew was married in 1987 to Emma Bridgewater, so what with Peter still designing madly for the theatre my life was pretty well filled with Design. Emma very kindly let me have an exhibition of flower paintings in her Fulham Road Shop. I had started doing water colours in the 80's and 90's just because Peter and Matthew were always painting and I felt left out. I had always drawn and painted in my sketchbook for design reference, but this was the first time I had done actual pictures. I started using a water colour box, which I had never done before. I had used all kinds of media but never a watercolour box. So this prepared me for lots more painting, which I have been doing ever since
2-072.jpg We left London in 2000, having lived in our house for nearly forty years. We had thought of moving to the country for some time. The end of a Millenium is as good a time as any there was no point in moving further away from Matthew and Emma, so we moved two miles away from them, and we are in Norfolk.
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