My Favourite Things: Kate Corbett-Winder 

 Artist and former journalist Kate Corbett-Winder shares the stories from her art collection. 

Originally a journalist and Vogue writer, Kate Corbett-Winder now paints full time, combining this passion with one for gardening. Her love of nature is evident in paintings that portray favourite plants, corners of her garden and the landscape where her inspiration is fed by the surrounding fields and hills of Montgomeryshire, in Wales, where she lives and paints. She has her fifth solo exhibition now at Long & Ryle Gallery, London. She shares a few of her favourite things.  

Andrew Logan’s glass portraits of Coco and Rose 

These wall portraits of our whippets, Rose and Coco, were a present I commissioned from artist sculptor and friend Andrew Logan for my husband William’s birthday. They are fabulous artworks, yet so lifelike in the way he has caught their exact profiles and characters. Sadly, Rose died last year but lives on in portrait form. Her sister Coco is 14 and going strong. 

Bronze portraits of Tom, Ned and Willow by Bryan Ellery 

I commissioned Bryan Ellery to make bronze portraits of our three children (Willow, Tom and Ned) when they were 13, 11 and nine. It was engrossing to watch their heads emerge in clay before being cast in bronze. Not only have we captured our children in time, but there is something reassuring about an artwork that demands to be touched, especially for a mother whose children are now seriously grown-up. 

The Cherry Stove, a restored Belgian Cuisinière c.1900s  

After moving from Vogue to mid Wales 1981, I contributed to a country matters feature, which gave me good reasons to hunt down eccentric craftspeople. Hence, the discovery of this cherry stove, mid-restoration in a Montgomeryshire barn. The owners ran a laid-back business trawling Belgium and northern France for vintage stoves. It was love at first sight, although, as this gem was not for sale, several years of negotiations followed before a price was agreed. It is a working oven, but it would be too erratic to cook on so has become a beautiful store chest and surface for garden pots and ceramics. 

Favourite collection of vintage French confit and olive-oil jars  

I am drawn to the delicious greens and ochre glazes of these pottery confit jars and love the way they are functional, as well as beautiful; found in antique shops in Wales, rather than in France. 

Hand-painted porcelain tulip teapot 1990 by Lesley Sunderland 

Lesley Sunderland was an incredible artist and a dear friend who tragically died too young in 1995. Ex-Royal College of Art, she painted on textile and ceramics and lived with artist Jonathan Heale in a Victorian studio house in Montgomery, which felt like Bloomsbury revived. My husband William gave me this porcelain teapot and, as I love parrot tulips, it makes the object doubly precious; it also seems to make tea taste delicious.   

A portrait of my mother Gabriel Alington, painted in 1946 by Maurice Feild  

This portrait of my mother was painted by Maurice Feild in 1946 when she was 14 years old, just back from being evacuated to the US during the Second World War. Feild, an early supporter of the Euston Road School was an inspirational art master at the Downs School before moving to the Slade in 1954. He had an influence on Kenneth Rowntree, Lawrence Gowing, Patrick George and Francis Hoyland. As a grandmother encouraging my family to paint, I love the inscription on the back of this canvas, suggesting it was a collaboration between sitter and artist. Sadly, I can’t ask my mother which part she painted. 

Refreshment by Geoffrey Tibble, painted in 1946, given to me by my husband William 

I love the gentle narrative of this painting; its muted palette and how the spaces around the women exaggerate their relationship. It hangs in my bedroom, and I notice something fresh in it most days.