It was June 1981, when I was a Director of Hollusions Ltd, that I saw my first embossed hologram, “Skull & Rocks” by John Caufman.1 Shortly afterwards, I set up a meeting with technicians at the PAT Centre in Royston, near Cambridge, to make “Pierrot with Ball”, one of the first photo-resist rainbow holograms ever made in Europe.
Nigel Abraham, of SEE 3 Holograms Ltd assisted me in making the laser-transmission H1 used for the “Pierrot with Ball” and he subsequently joined me to make the H2 Rainbow hologram master at the PAT Centre. Throughout the rest of 1981 he and I were both working independently to research surface-relief holography, with a view to setting up a facility in the UK. In 1982 I was invited by Nigel and Jonathan Ross to join SEE 3 Holograms, so that we could combine our findings and establish a system for making embossing masters.