I have always had a fascination with boxes. My father used to have dozens of boxes, all labelled and neatly stacked in cupboards. I was fascinated by them and their unpredictable contents. Ingredients for perfume making, screws, bits of stuff time forgot. Despite their ordinariness, the objects within the box acquired a value, simply by being worth keeping.
I have often created little worlds in the boxes, attempts to replicate the fascination I felt as a young boy. This was one of my first and most ambitious. It was a little world where various tricks and magic things combined to create a Victorian Charlatan's side show. I sold it to a collector many years later and then regretted it. For a long time it formed the basis for my lessons on imagination and possibilities, when I taught art in a secondary school. 'Can you imagine what is in the box?' Very few ever could of course....
