From August to September 1960, Piper visited Brittany and on the return to his studio at Fawley Bottom in Henley-on-Thames, produced a series of large collages from his sketchbooks that reflected his renewed interest in abstraction and in particular his pre-war collage technique. Using a wax resist, over which he applied watercolour and cut out marbled paper, these works are known as the Brittany Beach series. The marbled paper he employed can be traced back to his first experiments in making marbled paper in the late 1930s, in the bathtub at home using a mix of oil paint and turpentine.