This carving, by Zoe Ansari, celebrates the word ‘Catkin’, and was created as part of our exhibition ‘The Lost Words - Forget-me-not.’ For this exhibition artists have created a permanent record of the natural words removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary.

Slate. Size: 13 x 18cm

NOUN: CATKIN

A downy, hanging flowering spike of trees such as willow and hazel, pollinated by the wind

Origin: Late 16th century: from obsolete Dutch katteken meaning kitten. The flowering stem of a willow, birch, hazel and more.

In my design I have attempted to represent the long green form and the small round furry grey kind.

I chose the word Catkin because as a child I had a fondness and fascination of the small grey fury Catkins that I would strip from their stems and pretend they were tiny kittens.