Right from the start of 1993 there was public controversy about Amber Hiscott’s Delius sculpture.

It wasn’t so much the cost – the £30,000 for the five-tonne steel and glass double leaf structure came from the Foundation for Sports and the Arts and two private sponsors.

The Welsh sculptor’s tribute to the composer’s love of nature struck some as inappropriate – “a cockroach embedded in the web of a rotten leaf”, said T&A reader Margaret Jarvis.

Others thought Bradford-born scientist and Nobel Prize-winner Sir Edward Appleton was more deserving of a civic memorial. In the words of Conservative Councillor Stanley King: “If we wish to honour an eminent Bradfordian, why not Sir Edward Appleton, whose scientific discoveries were of incalculable value to Britain and who never turned his back on his native city?”

In spite of all this, on November 23, 1993, a crane lowered the creation into place on the plinth it has occupied ever since, between the Crown Court and the Great Victoria Hotel.

The design was chosen from more than 80 entries in a nationwide competition organised by Public Arts, a Wakefield-based charity. It was officially unveiled by Bradford Lord Mayor Councillor Bob Sowman.

Amber Hiscott, based in Dylan Thomas’s home town of Swansea, studied fine art theory at Essex University and gained a diploma in architectural glass from Swansea College of Art.

If the sculptor joined in the controversy there is no record of it in the T&A’s Delius archive. Judging by the following statement taken from her website, her artistic priorities take precedence over the rough and tumble of public debate.

“I lead a dream-like inquiry into the spirit of place, seeking evidence in a visual form, working with light and shade in two and three dimensions, vainly hoping to crystallise the fourth. Glass is my love because of its sensuality and mystery, but I am not monogamous. Architecture and environment provide the style, the role changes.”

After the unveiling, the T&A asked people what they thought. Car park attendant Brian Greenaway reportedly scratched his head and replied: “It could be a Viking longboat, the T&A Christmas grotto or even Madonna’s bra.”

But the last word belonged to Teresa Eabry, of Woodside. “I think it is absolutely amazing – it is lovely. It makes Bradford look good and important.”