Richard Weston is a renowned architect and author as well as Professor of Architecture at the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University.
Richard featured in the BBC2 series, Britain's Next Big Thing, presented by Theo Paphitis of Dragon's Den fame, which charted his progress culminating in our images becoming a top selling scarf collection at Liberty of London.
On the right, he is seen filming with the BBC crew on Lake Como on a visit to the Italian silk printers.
However, his creative achievements go back many years. As part of the FutureWorld exhibition, he designed and built Radiant House, which was conceived as an inhabitable walled garden with a plywood roof floating on structural glass. He has also designed a wonderfully original Triangular House among other highly creative designs, and is now working on lamps and furniture. His work has been exhibited on several occasions in the Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts.
Richard's books include Modernism, winner of the International Book Award of the American Institute of Architects, and what has been described as possibly the finest monograph ever produced about an architect, on the work of Jørn Utzon, architect of Sydney Opera House.
His passion for mineral images began when he bought an ammonite that cost more than his scanner: the results were dreadful - and the scanner now used cost rather more than many ammonites - but the results are wonderful.
They often demand a great deal of time to produce: preparing the minerals, taking scan after scan, and then digitally removing blemishes left by polishing powder and dust. Only a few have made it into this online collection. Without his passion, Richard could not possibly have amassed such a large collection of world class images - and you wouldn't be reading this today.
In 2010, Richard received the Welsh Design Award For Fashion and Textiles for silk fabrics and clothes using these images.
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