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Games: Games people play

Pandora Melly
Friday 27 February 1998 19:02 EST
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Kaffe Fassett, 60, painter and textile designer

The funny thing is, when I first started making mosaics, I would spend masses of money in antique shops. Trying to get chipped things, cracked things, for slightly less. Then, of course, I realised that the place to go these days is a good old car boot sale.

There's a local one that I really love. I walk down there every Sunday morning and shop the place out. For 50p or pounds 1.50, I can get bowls and jugs and mugs and everything in the colours I like. I even bought a whole set of china for pounds 15 one mad day, and smashed it up to put on a couple of great big clay pipes that I'm covering in very rich colours.

I can't bear to spend too much money on pots and tiles and things for mosaics, so what I do is this: I go to every car boot sale that I can find. It's a kind of game of trying to find all the colours I need, as cheaply as possible, even bargaining from 50p to 30p and so forth.

A friend of mine has a house in the country near Ryde, and we often go out to where amazing things happen in fields near airports. Great massive packs of people - God knows where they live - I have a feeling that they drive round the whole country doing all the car boot sales. They roll up with these enormous truckfuls of stuff; sinks and bath-plugs and things like that.

What I love about mosaics is that I'm taking the detritus of humanity and making it into something quite other - it's like making magic out of absolute drivelling crap which would otherwise be cluttering up the attic; stuff that everyone's just dying to throw out of their closets.

`The Magic Mosaics of Kaffe Fassett' will be in the Hillier Nurseries and Garden Centres exhibit in the Great Marquee (stand E17) at this year's Chelsea Flower Show, 19-22 May. Tickets: 0171-344 4343. Early booking is advisable.

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