This is my fifth collection of spoons since the first one I made last winter and the bowls are getting deeper and stems thicker as I move towards shapes that are softer in the hand and still playful to the eye. Practice, practice; pinch, pinch; paint, paint. I made these ones at my kitchen table while listening to Bella Freud in conversation with Cate Blanchett. “Nowadays, aspiring filmmakers are often told to find their own voice. But I would encourage stealing from everyone and everything, which is what I have done. I think that in part you are paying homage to your role models, but it is also a way to connect. In a way, you are in conversation with the actor or filmmaker you are stealing from. The obsession with being original or groundbreaking often works as a pitfall.” To make these spoons, I stole from Suzanne Sullivan whose ceramic spoons were the first I ever loved, and from Paula Greif who inspired me to bundle them together as sets. I stole from Kate Semple who brings a freedom to her craft that I only ever feel in bursts. And from Nigel Slater who doesn’t make spoons but writes about them in a way that inspires those who do. It was Alexander McQueen who said, “If you’re lucky enough to use something you see in a dream, it is purely original, it’s not in the world, it’s in your head.” Most things I create are an amalgam of stealing and dreaming. I like to think of our brains as containing one of those moving carousels filled with images captured over time; one never knows which images will show themselves and when, and how we will distill them into the things we create.