HEIRLOOMS OF THE FUTURE ANN CARRINGTON

Meet the award-winning artist repurposing antique buttons, pearls, coins and cutlery into showstopping works of art, fit for a queen

- RHIANNON BATTEN

Years ago, when sculptor Ann Carrington's young son had chickenpox and couldn't go to nursery, Carrington took him roaming in London. At one point they stopped near Trafalgar Square, captivated by the window of a stamp shop. They couldn't go inside, but Carrington's eye was caught by a tiny stamp with a profile of The Queen, designed by Arnold Machin in 1970; she went back the next day and bought it. 'I knew it was the beginning of something,' she says. "When I blew the stamp up to a large scale, all the printing dots looked like buttons and I thought, “That's perfect - pearly kings and queens and buttons and alternative royal families”. The stories dovetailed.'

Carrington often plays with scale in this way, turning familiar objects into pieces the viewer is forced to observe in a fresh light. Besides the Pearly Queen button tapestries, which grew out of her almost Pointillist reworking of Machin's stamp (and will no doubt be even more sought after this year in light of The Queen's Platinum Jubilee), this can be seen in works such as her 12 giant 'shell lady sculptures. Made from real scallop shells collected from local fishermen, they appeared around Margate over summer 2008 (you can still see one today at the town's Shell Grotto). A huge 12-foot bronze version also sits outside Margate's Turner Contemporary gallery, in homage to Mrs Booth, Turner's landlady and partner.