Silver Service

Above: latest magazine

Twenty years ago, Alison Saundry swapped London for a tranquil corner of southwest France and transformed her life in more ways than she could have imagined.

‘I’d taken a fine arts degree at Reading University and worked at the Conran shop for a long time,’ says Alison, ‘but by the late 1980s I’d decided I wanted to go back into the art world. I went on a part-time course to train as a silversmith and learn how to make jewellery but then I became ill and after several months of feeling very poorly I was eventually diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.’ For many people such a devastating turn of events would have put an end to any ambitious plans they’d made but Alison just became even more determined.

‘I didn’t want to carry on working and living in London with all the pressures that involved and I’d grown to love France from holidays,’ she says. ‘Also at that time prices in the southwest were very cheap as, unlike Dordogne and Provence, the area was still largely undiscovered by the Brits.

This article can be found on page(s) 28 - 31 of the lastest issue

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