‘I was researching for a series of paintings exploring iconography when I came across a number of stamps, mostly from the UK, Germany and the former Soviet Union and about a variety of subjects such as the space programme, agriculture, the Olympics and industry. The stamps were tiny concentrations of design, simplified yet with great beauty. So I decided to produce some prints that resembled stamps, each type of stamp celebrating a ‘first’.

The second set is of the NSU Spider, the first production car to have a Wankel rotary engine. Felix Wankel developed the rotary engine to have fewer moving parts and be smaller than conventional piston engines. NSU took up the idea and produced the Spider in 1964 as a demonstration of the engine, hoping to market the technology. The Spider was followed by the Ro80 in 1967, a saloon car which won the European 'Car of the Year' that year. However, failure of the apex seals and a very generous warranty meant that in 1969 the company were in severe financial difficulty. The were bought by VW and merged with Auto Union to become Audi. Today the seal problem has been resolved and Wankel engines are found in a variety of applications: most famously, the Mazda RX-8 car (until 2012), but also in motorbikes, aircraft engines, outboard boat engines and even chain saw engines. Current research includes using a Wankel engine as an on-board generator to extend the range of electric vehicles.’

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