I have used Winter Scene, in the North-East Corridor of Preston Manor as my starting point in Unravelling the Manor House.This haunting painting is by the Flemish artist Joost de Momper (1564–1635) whose winter landscapes are his most famous artistic achievements. Its wintry sky casts a glow over the snow-laden roofs of the houses and the enormous windmill. In the foreground are the busy antics of little groupings of people on the ice whilst fantastically spindly, snow-laden trees, bent under their snowy burden, frame the edges of the painting.

What fascinates me about Winter Scene is that most of this detail is hard to see because the painting is so dark and gloomy and is protected by glass. Reflections from the windows and furniture in the corridor and the trees outside lay themselves on the glass surface, becoming at one with the painting. It is hard to see the windmill at all and combined with the loose painting style, the antics of the figures on the ice are rendered obscure and mysterious.

I have taken all this at face value and used this fragmentation as the basis for my ceramic intervention. After a period of trial and error investigating suitable shapes and forms, I decided to make a cloth – or patchwork – which consists of many porcelain hexagons, sewn together with catgut, which appear to be emerging out of the chest by the window.

On these component pieces I have intaglio-printed – or press- moulded – my interpretations and stories of the intriguing figures and trees in the painting that I know to be there, together with the images that now present themselves. I have used techniques that I employ in my ceramic work. Some are highly glazed to produce further reflective interventions; some bear the ghostly indentation or memories of people on the ice.