Silk Roads is the first of a new series of work celebrating the interconnectedness through trade of culture, language and artefacts. Based on the Silk Road which was promoted after the second world war to encourage mutual appreciation and exchange between countries, and which also developed cultural collaboration and governmental cooperation. The Silk Road was in fact not one route for exchanged goods, but a wide network of criss-crossing pathways that connected East to West and South to North. The figure in the work represents the Silk Princess, a popular legend of how silk production was smuggled out of China, with the silkworm eggs and mulberry seeds hidden in her headdress. By the eighteenth century Spitalfields, in the east end of London, had become a major European centre for Silk weaving. The area is also a few roads down from Printspace that produce the prints for MISTER on Hahnemuhle German etching paper. Each print is extensively hand finished with acrylic paint and embellished with gold leaf.