Minnie Mae-Stott, Olive Branch Plate

“As a tiny child Minnie-Mae Stott was taken to Hackney’s Ridley Road market. There she was dazzled by the old Eastenders with their watercress bunches, peas and broad beans, the Indian stalls with Alphonso mangoes and okra, and the Jamaican ones with sugar cane and scotch-bonnet chillies. It wasn’t just the delicious food on display but the colours, shapes and patterns that animated her imagination. Now her Margate studio teems with the same bounty, albeit in ceramic form: red radish table decorations, golden peas in a pod, pears painted on to plates. They’re tactile things; you want to touch them and hold them in your hand. For Stott this is all part of a nod to her late grandmother and great-grandmother, with whom she would spend hours podding peas, pulling carrots, picking redcurrants and raspberries, and stirring summer puddings. Done by hand, these acts became a kind of ritual between the women, one continued today in her work. “ WORLD OF INTERIORS by Daisy Dawnay