TO see one of the model bookshops, tiny comics or cigarette packets created by Derek Kent is to marvel at the astonishing accuracy, the level of skill and the sheer talent which goes into their creation.

PHILIPPA MAY talks to the Hereford man who has enjoyed a "lifetime of controlled collecting" and crafts these exquiste miniature masterpieces.

WHEN Derek Kent creates one of the exquisitely detailed miniature bookshops that are now available exclusively at Hay-on-Wye's Old Forest Fine Art Printers, he is, in a small way, recreating a part of his own past.

One of his earliest childhood memories is of his father walking with him around London, visiting bookshops and art dealers throughout the city,including the dozens of shops lining Charing Cross Road.

"To this day I find the atmosphere of bookshops compelling," he says.

Add to the nostalgia a fascination with all things miniature and the result was, perhaps, inevitable.

"I had a fascination with model theatres, too," recalls Derek.

"I think it was about having an entire world under my control."

Having built the theatre, Derek would also write, direct and put on plays for visiting relatives.

"I remember one uncle would always arrive and ask: 'What have we got this year? Yet another one?'"

At school, Derek's talent for art was such that he was constantly asked to do other students' homework for them, requests he says he resisted. "I think it might have been spotted when every piece of work looked the same," he observes.

His obvious talent made the next move a natural, even inevitable, one and, after school, he took a degree in Fine Art at Hornsey Art College, taught by some of the biggest names of the day, among them abstract painters Bridget Riley and John Hoyland.

But it was when he went to the Royal College of Art that he came into contact with the man who provided lasting inspiration. Though when Derek met and was taught by Peter Blake at the RCA, Blake had yet to achieve the fame that was to come his way with his album cover for the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

"I loved his style, his love of Englishness," says Derek.

A love of Englishness and of the particularly English graphics and colours of book covers, comics and a range of packaging, led to the start of a lifetime of controlled collecting.

But there is no hint of clutter about Derek's collecting and he is very specific about what appeals to him and why.

"The fascination with books is about the knowledge, information and narrative expression contained within a perfect package," he explains. Derek's first boxed works of art featured collections of miniature comics, especially The Eagle, for which he has a particular affection.

"But only the perfect decade between 1950 and 1960," and cigarette packets, despite thinking smoking a filthy habit.

"It's the graphics and the colours again," he explains.

His cellar is a 'museum', a tribute to a golden period in graphics, full of beautifully displayed examples of packaging of the past, collected, as always, for the colours and graphics.

For a man with such a deep affection for bookshops and a need to re-create them again and again, one suspects there may have been an element ofsubconscious serendipity about the choice of Hereford when he and wife Carole chose it as their escape route from south London. After all, Hay-on-Wye must have leapt out of the Bartholomew's map that provided inspiration for the move.

Derek says that Herefordshire had instant appeal "because it didn't have many towns."

Derek doesn't personalise the bookshops he makes.

"People have asked me, but I don't think it would work," he maintains.

Instead, they are all copies of real bookshops such as Ludlow's Castle Bookshop, Bell Street Books in Reigate, "where I spent weeks and weeks of my childhood", Church Street Books, Abbey Bookshop - names which summon up something quintessential about English life.

Increasingly, though, French bibliotheques are now also making an appearance.

Given the attention to detail, the amount of work that is clearly involved and the desirability of the finished article, people are amazed to discover that making miniature bookshops is something of a sideline, a distraction from the day job (Derek also teaches). Until now, his highly collectable bookshops have largely found homes with the many people he knows in the music industry - Derek is a co-founder of the Hereford Folk Club at the Courtyard.

"I find them hard to let go of," he admits. "But as they mostly go to friends, I usually see them again."

With the forthcoming display of a selection of his work at Old Forest Fine Art Printers and Framers in Hay-on-Wye, and the attention they will undoubtedly attract, he's sure to have seen the last of some of them this time.

Derek Kent's miniature framed bookshops range in price from £200-£500 and can be seen at Old Forest Fine Art printers and Framers, The Craft Centre, Hay-on-Wye, 01497 820680.