Tree Cups

Private Collection

Copper, Enamel

H 75 x DAI 65 mm

Devon Guild of Craftsmen

"You must not destroy the trees, wielding the axe against them; you may eat of them, but you must not cut them down." (Deuteronomy 20:19)

The natural world, especially trees, weaves throughout much of my work. I have used the images of the “Tree of Life” and the olive branch as the basis for several of my commissions.

I have photographed the trees in my garden from the window of my studio in Cambridge, a place I have chosen to put down new roots.  I fused these images of my personal landscape onto the enamelled surface of five cups by means of photographic transfer. Together, they are variations on a theme: both of my personal response to nature, and more generally of the relationship between people and place. The image of the trees on these drinking vessels evokes a poem by the Israeli poet Natan Zach (born in Berlin, moved to Palestine in 1935), entitled “The Tree of the Field”:

Like the tree, the man grows up,

Like the man, the tree also gets uprooted . . . 

Like the tree, he is thirsty for water.

Like the man, thirsty it remains . . .

And I surely do not know where I have been and where will I be, like the tree