The much-loved art world bon viveur passed away four years ago this month. We take a look back at what made her, and her work, so special.

The original rock n roll artist, Nancy Fouts had pedigree. Back in the 1960s, she designed album covers for artists including Manfred Mann and Steeleye Span before a Mad Men phase which saw her winning awards for her advertisements for the likes of Benson & Hedges and Virgin.

By all accounts, there was something about Fouts that made all and sundry fall in love with her. She was friends with everyone from Ai Weiwei to Sir Peter Blake. As Gavin Turk told The Guardian on her death, “She would take you excitedly down to her magical workshop in the basement to pull open drawers of feathers, watches, shells, eyeballs and jewellery tools. Her infectious laughter and flashing eyes would sparkle as she described with her maker’s hands her latest conception or discussed the affairs of the day in visual metaphor.”

Fouts’ pieces are equally beguiling. Like a tongue-in-cheek cabinet of curiosities, her sculptures and paintings provoke both laughter and further thought. Here, we take a look back at some of her most famous work…

Fouts’ surrealist sense of humour was at the fore of one of the most famous ad campaigns of all time. Devised for cigarette brand Silk Cut, it featured her work as a model maker and consisted of impactful visuals of sharp objects cutting through vibrant purple cloth, including one featuring a Swiss Army knife that resembled a scurrying insect and another with an iron embedded with spikes.

In 1986, Fouts created an iconic poster for the London Underground with her then-husband as the duo Shirt Sleeve Studio. Every line was reproduced with fat trails of paint, while a tube of the stuff marked Pimlico at the edge of the map. Some of Fouts’s early advertising work remains in circulation, including the Pizza Express logo which she created in 1967 for £35.

Shirt Sleeve Studio created album covers for some of the best known bands of the day – from Manfred Mann to Nana Mouskouri. Among them was an image for Jethro Tull’s Songs From The Wood which featured Fouts’ trademark surrealism in the form of a tree stump transformed into a record player.

One of Fouts’s most famous artworks, this sculpture illustrates both her skill as a model maker (honed during her years in advertising) and her surreal sense of humour. Typical of the artist’s oeuvre, it’s exacting in its execution, even if the idea is pure whimsy, with a perfect set of teeth implanted into an old purse. This is a fantastic example of Fouts’ gift for breathing life into everyday objects.

Birds and eggs are recurring themes in Fouts’s work. In one piece (Baby Nest), a pregnant belly rises out of a nest; in several others, taxidermy chicks crowd under glass cloches. This piece reveals six eggs standing neatly in what first appears to be a nest but, on second glance, is an egg box fashioned out of twigs.

Fouts’ former home caused a huge stir in the press when it was marketed after her death. It was a work of art in itself and a tribute to her unique and vibrant personality. A converted vicarage designed by the architect behind Alexandra Palace, it was packed with her collections – from antique books and oils of Christ to horse rosettes and vast collages of crosses and sacred hearts.