My dear friend James went off travelling the world (again!) and after trekking through south-east Asia, India, Pakistan and Iran he landed in Istanbul. He fell head over heels in love with the city and has set up home there for the foreseeable future. I’d always wanted to visit the city and James being there seemed like a great excuse to do so, given that I was on the way to London anyway.

I found the city very intriguing and took a lot away in terms of thoughts about art and design - particularly relating to use of dense pattern and colour. I also developed a bit of an obsession with windows in the city and took many photos of them.

The outcome of this is that I’ve started work on a holloware object reflecting my Istanbul-related inspirations which I hope will form part of an exhibition called Expeditions which will open in October and is being run by my metal supplier, A&E Metals. To help motivate me with my work, I’ll tell you a bit about it.

The piece will be a small non-functional box which I plan to be sealed closed. Each panel of the box will have a small window cut out of it, based on the many photographs I took of windows in Istanbul. The interior of the cube will be etched with dense Turkish patterns which I plan to enamel in bright colours. The exterior will be plain silver, probably with a muted finish.

The idea will be that the windows allow light in so that you can see aspects of the highly decorative interior, but it will be difficult to see it all, reflecting the way I felt about Istanbul as being a fairly mysterious and partly impenetrable place.

At this stage I’ve done the etching of the patterns and they look good. But other than that the box is all in pieces and there is a lot of work to be done! I hope to make a start on it this weekend and will share my progress as I work.