FT: Absolutely. Whenever I try and pinpoint any clear threads in my work, it normally comes down to landscape, sculpture in terms of sculptural geometry and form, and materials. It’s also those three things that I see so much in that modernist British period of work. They were also concerned with form and geometry, obsession with materials and the palette from the natural landscape. In terms of artists working in Cornwall, the palette from a Patrick Heron is incredible – I’ve done whole interiors based around his palette. There was an interior I designed in Mayfair for someone who had collected a series of Patrick Herons and every room was inspired by Heron, it was just beautiful.

FC: Do all your projects begin with a work of art?

FT: They often start with materials or a work of art from that Modernist period. Certainly when I look at works by Hepworth, the geometry for me just feels so right, in terms of the curves, the female forms but at the same time the volume and the void, the precious and the raw. I really love the work she did with plaster as well as her work with finer stones. It’s the contrasts that I find so compelling, the precious and the raw, the masculine and the feminine.

FC: You mentioned the curves in Hepworth’s sculpture and your famous chair, the Roly Poly, does have similarities to the little alabaster carving in our sale - was Hepworth in your mind when you were creating it?

FT: When I saw the carving in the sale, I did think, wow, that is the Roly Poly! I did that collection straight after giving birth to my eldest daughter and that chair in particular, that shape, does draw in many influences. People see many different things it in - something that feels quite pop and 1960s, quite art deco, African, primitive - there are a lot of references there and certainly there is a nod to Hepworth and to the primitive references in her work.

FC: Hepworth also had multiples, triplets in 1934. Like her, how do you balance family life with your three children and producing all your collections and designs.

FT: It is so interesting as a young girl being inspired so early on by someone like Barbara Hepworth. I just remember feeling her force and determination in those photos I saw and I think that’s definitely within me. I think the word relentless best describes me, in all its negative as well as its positive forms. I have within me the ability to juggle multiple things and I always need to feel that I am progressing in my own way in my own language.

I didn’t study Design I just studied Fine Art and History of Art and yet I’m working in Design. The fact that I didn’t study it has allowed me not to have any rules. I think a lot of designers fear opening books pre 1920, at a stretch maybe 1910. But studying History of Art and Fine Art has allowed me to feel quite comfortable going right back and that has definitely influenced my work. Working with no rules and learning on the job; my career has basically been a series of trial and error and experimentation.

FC: How did you move into Design from studying History of Art and Fine Art?

FT: I graduated from Bristol and spent eight years at the World of Interiors magazine as the Interiors Editor. The extraordinary exposure that I had to Fine Art, Antiques and Interiors - and that’s anything from a Swedish palace to a mud hut in Mali - was just the most incredible education straight off the back of History of Art. However, after eight years, I felt desperate to work with in three dimensions and had a real desire to make objects and create spaces and to make the objects within those spaces. It started with designing interiors, then the desire to make the things within the interiors then more recently, clothing. A lot of people don’t understand the interrelationship between all these disciplines until I put them in the same bracket as the Omega Workshops or the Bloomsbury group. When you apply your sense of materials and your sense of form to clothing and the way you dress, for me, its all part of the same thing, the same language. It’s just another form of visual expression. You can completely transform the way someone feels about themselves with a piece of cloth. My sister is a fantastic pattern cutter and so the link between sculpture and creating clothes feels very close.

FC: Your Spring/Summer 2021 fashion collection is inspired by Paul Nash’s famous painting of Dymchurch titled The Shore from 1923 - how did that collection come about, had you always loved that picture?

FT: I have always loved it and rediscovered the image in a book. I have always been obsessive about collecting books and regularly return to them. I found the picture again and became completely captivated by it and so it became the genesis of the whole collection.