Allegra developed her ceramics through adult education in Hammersmith and Fulham. She also benefited greatly from some one-to-one tuition from Seth Cardew at Wenford Bridge.

Her work is informed by the enduring resonance of ancient forms. She plays with the paradoxes inherent in clay, combining the primitive with the modern, the utilitarian with the sculptural, embedding the universality of its language in contained generosity. She often combines regular wheel-thrown forms with sculptural decoration to suggest latent life, as if the clay is trapping the creature inside whose shape is implied in the bulge of a pot's belly or the spine of its handle.