What was the difference between a likeness, a portrait and an effigy? I knew that the best way of achieving a likeness was not to pursue one at all, but rather to examine the underlying structure of the head in close detail and set it down methodically. The head on a coin is described at the Royal Mint as an effigy. So to questions of sculptural soundness were added those of design – how much did its elements visually and conceptually complement each other?

I also designed the inscriptions surrounding the head in collaboration with the team at the Royal Mint. I pored over the plasticine model, questioning not only whether it looked enough like its subject but also whether it was sufficiently coherent in artistic terms. And yet in many ways the job was no different from any other. The responsibility of creating a piece of work that would be reproduced in the hundreds of millions weighed on me. The head I modelled will be used on the obverse face of all the denominations, right down to the humble penny. I’ve never sculpted anything as small as a coin before. They are necessarily one-offs, and I am used to magnification of scale rather than quantity. These have been to great authors, including John Betjeman, Philip Larkin and Charles Dickens, as well as to previously neglected women such as Mary Seacole and Sheffield’s women of steel.