JENNY SCOTT meets an artist with true transatlantic appeal

SET back off the main road, at the end of a meandering country lane beyond Clitheroe, lies Bashall Barn, the small craft and farm shop where Jenny Cork creates her intricate jewellery designs.

Sinuous curls of wire link together the colourful glassy beads of Jenny's distinctive creations, which have already travelled across the Atlantic as far as stylish Rhode Island and caught the eye of the heir to the throne.

Jenny's workshop is tucked away in the far corner of the barn. As you step across the threshold beams of light dart about, rebounding off the polished glass surfaces of Jenny's creations which include decorative wall panels depicting shoals of fish and sparkling crushed glass bowls.

The tiny niche has the feel of a tempting sweet shop, with different, eyecatching designs clamouring for your attention.

At the back of the shop stands Jenny who, at 29, has managed to fashion a burgeoning business from her talent for art and design.

Sometimes, her recently acquired business sense forces her to rein in her natural creative instincts.

However, she says: "If you are doing something creative you have to take risks, or your work doesn't have that flair. It would be more profitable if I did more boring work, but I don't want to."

When she set up shop, two years ago, Jenny's business won the support of the Prince's Trust which offered her both a loan and a mentor, ex-businessman Tom Griffiths, from Sabden.

Tom advises her on profitability, tax returns and checks her books. Jenny said: "Every month I have to fill in a progress report on sales and promotions. It's very useful - if you were in business on your own, you could just drift."

The trust also brought with it the opportunity for Jenny to meet Prince Charles and present him with a piece of her work when he visited the Ribble Valley in January.

"He was very interested in what I did and how I make my designs," said Jenny.

Jenny's flair for design was evident even as a youngster, when she was growing up in Preston.

She inherited her talent, she says, from her architect father. "I've always made things, ever since I was little," she said. "I used to make horses out of pipe cleaners, and sewing machines out of toilet rolls, and then I was frustrated when they didn't work.

"At school, everyone used to ask: 'Are you going to be an artist when you grow up?'

"To me it always seemed a perfectly normal way of earning a living. But to everyone else it seemed mad."

On leaving school, Jenny took a foundation course in art and design at the University of Central Lancashire before, following the suggestion of a tutor, she did a degree in glass and ceramics at the Wolverhampton School of Art and Design.

"My tutor suggested I work on glass," she said. "I think he thought I needed a bit of a challenge to keep me quiet, and it worked!"

The more she practised glass moulding techniques, the more Jenny learned about her new skill.

"Making glass in a kiln is an even older technique than glass blowing," she said. "The ancient Egyptians first invented it. In the past 20 years, it's become quite popular as an art form.

"I make the moulds from a mixture of plastic and glass fibre so they will withstand the heat of the kiln. I put the glass in cold - quite often I mould different colours together. When it comes out of the kiln I have to grind off the sharp bits."

Many of Jenny's works are inspired by the natural world around her, particularly the countryside and the ocean.

"Quite a few of my wall pieces are sea scapes and landscapes," she said. "I really just enjoy experimenting with the glass."

After leaving college, Jenny worked in galleries for a couple of years, occasionally exhibiting her work.

Then, out of the blue, she received a telephone call from a fan who had seen her work, Marianne Spottswood, an American with a gallery in Paris.

After exhibiting her creations in Paris, Jenny was then offered the chance to travel across the Atlantic and work with Marianne in Rhode Island.

It was a chance she couldn't turn down, although she adds: "It was quite a challenge going to somebody else's workshop and it was difficult, because in America the measurements are imperial and the kiln temperatures are in Fahrenheit. But it was a great experience."

Before she went out to America Jenny had been offered the chance to set up a small shop in Bashall Barn - a craft and local produce store which was being set up by Simon Barnes on his family's farm.

When she returned to England, she found the country in the grip of foot-and-mouth, but Simon's business nevertheless managing to thrive.

Since then, Jenny says, she hasn't looked back. Besides her shop in Bashall, she has outlets throughout the UK and plans to expand more into the south of England. She is also often approached to do specially commissioned designs.

However, she still sees her craft as a learning process. "Things don't go wrong as much these days, but when I first started I had tons of mishaps."