British artist Sarah Gillespie's early Mezzotints and Drypoints.

Sarah tells:

"I’m an artist, not an entomologist – nor do I have a background in natural history. But I’ve always lived in the countryside, apart from the years when I was studying. I’ve always walked and I’ve had the habit of solitude, really, so looking at nature is part of my DNA. I don’t even like saying “looking at nature” because it implies a subject-object dualism, which I’m not interested in. I did want to study biology, but I come from the era when they wouldn’t let you do both sciences and arts. You had to choose.

I grew up and went to school in Hampshire, then failed to get into art school. My dad, being an Irish immigrant, said, “Come on, then, let’s let’s go elsewhere. If you want to paint, let’s go to Paris.” He found a little art school in Paris and literally put me in the car with a portfolio and took me for an interview. So I went to Paris for a year and studied 16th- and 17th-century methods and materials with some extraordinary people in an old fashioned atelier. This was unheard of in England. We had a master, worked very long hours, and everybody cooked and helped. We worked and worked. It was a fantastic grounding.

From there, my parents said I had to apply to university, so I ended up at Oxford at the Ruskin School of drawing and fine art. I learned pretty much nothing during three years in the painting school, but I did learn a great deal in the printmaking studios. I was happier there. I found the painting too narcissistic and egotistical, and not sufficiently grounded in technique.

Afterwards I just wanted to start painting. I won quite a large international bursary on leaving Oxford, enough for me to live on for about three years, which was life changing. I haven’t looked back. I’ve been painting and drawing ever since."

Giorgio Ferro (born 1931, Murano, Italy) is a Murano glass designer and maker. Giorgio was born into a family of glass makers. His father, Galliano Ferro, was the talented glass designer who founded Vetreria Artistica Galliano Ferro in 1955.

Giorgio studied at the Carmini State Institute of Art in Venice, graduating in 1951. From 1951 until 1955 he worked as a designer at the Arte Vetraria Muranese (A.V.E.M.), the factory founded by his grandfather Antonio Ferro, his father Galliano Ferro, and by Emilio Nason and Giulio Radi.

After the death of Giulio Ravi in 1952, the young Giorgio took the role of lead designer of A.V.E.M. It is during this time that Giorgio first created the successful Ansa Volante vases, made of thick chromatic iridescent glass–a technique that he had learned from Radi, creating sinuous curves, small openings and large handles. These designs were exhibited in the 1952 Venice Biennale.