A mermaid who never quite became a mermaid.

Mermaid Manqué began with an old painting belonging to a friend, a wonderfully curious figure sitting beside the water beneath a tiny crescent moon. My friend calls her Mermaid Manqué, a name I loved immediately.

I photographed the original painting and used the image to create this one-off piece in my studio.

The image has been printed and carefully applied to the lid of a genuine vintage metal tin, allowing the bumps, scratches and imperfections of the old surface to remain visible beneath it. I particularly wanted to keep that texture rather than make the finished piece look new.

The tin itself has plenty of age and character, with worn metal, scratches, marks and remnants of its former life still visible around the sides, inside and underneath. These are deliberately part of the finished piece rather than flaws to be disguised.

A small, slightly strange object for keeping jewellery, threads, tiny treasures, letters or whatever else needs somewhere to live.