I suppose my approach to working with ‘recycled materials’ is the same as my approach to any other material: if I like the material I’ll try and find an opportunity to work with it. I liked the French digging hoe and it seemed an ideal ‘material’ (heavy at the bottom, tall and rather elegant) to make a standard lamp from. Making things from recycled objects and materials can seem as though you’ve stumbled across thousands of new materials that, for some reason, you had overlooked before. It is also enjoyable to contradict the hierarchy of materials. The crafts have often been keen on ‘good’ materials. It is interesting as a furniture designer to tease the qualities out of knotty re-claimed off-cuts and to discover (to an extent anyway), that the difference between a ‘good bit’ over the ‘waste’ is really chance. This is all about perceptions. Present something in a different way and with luck it will be ready differently. What I like about the hoe lamp is that by representing it, its beauty is judged afresh (minus some of the potting shed associations) and it is allowed indoors.

Reclaimed Recycling in contemporary British Crafts and Design, The British Council, London 1999