'Kate Haywood is drawn to unusual objects, so we invited her to respond to the Mary Greg collection at Manchester Art Gallery, a unique assemblage of over 3,000 objects collected at the turn of the 20th century.
Mary Greg collected pre-industrial tools, toys, personal accessories and everyday knick-knacks. Greg appreciated handmade objects in an age in which such things were becoming obsolete, discarded in favour of industrial products. Some of her finds were exquisite and unusual, but most were humble household items and inexpensive curios.
Greg’s motivation for collecting was to spark creativity and imagination in others: she wrote
"How glad we all should be if we could know if any (visitors) ever make a single thing… we must leave the answer to the future…"
Kate Haywood has chosen exquisitely decorated Elizabethan plates, known as roundels, from Greg’s collection to inspire her wall piece Feast made especially for Manchester Art Gallery.'
Janet Boston, Curator of Craft and Design, Manchester Art Gallery
