Spike Bucklow has a scientific background and has worked in film and TV producing special effects. His latex creations feature in films including Indiana Jones, Little Shop of Horrors, Princess Bride, and the 1980s satirical TV show Spitting Image. He is now Senior Research Scientist and Teacher of Theory at the Hamilton Kerr Institute in Cambridge, where he studied for a PhD in the Conservation of Easel Paintings. He has written about pigment use in art for a number of journals and draws on a wide range of experiences and research of ancient texts, scrolls and manuscripts to develop his ideas. He prefers to avoid the modern world wherever possible.