Fox Photo Shoot

Well  the fox  is packed up and off to it's new home after a blustery photo shoot.

Photo shoots are notoriously one of the more stressful elements of every commission. With the fox, the wind meant we were trying to position the vane and get the picture before the tail swung around in the wrong direction. It usually means we discard more than half the images. Occasionally we keep one of comic value, or of a strange angle or moody background. I am only sharing the one  below, because it somehow reminds me of "The Creation of Adam". Not that I would compare either the photo or the weathervane to a masterpiece by Michelangelo, but the hand still seems enigmatic....

We also completed the internal dial for the heraldic ship weathervane this week. We have set up an impromptu studio gallery in the house...it creates a nice warm place to pack gift orders, gild and bring clients in from the cold, for a coffee while looking at the portfolios.

Chestnut Fencing in the Snow

Well, we had our first snow early Friday morning. It fell in heavy clumps as the barn at the back was being clad, but never promised to stick, so the crew progressed with the help of several cups of tea. For those of you following the changes around the farm and fields at Woodfield Farmhouse, I thought I would post a few pictures of the changes.

When we moved here in 2008 we must have been the two most optimistic people on the planet! Having spent 7 years in a cramped stone cottage on the moor, we had no idea the amount of money, energy & resolve this house was going to require. But the potential was undeniable.

 The 3 acre field at the side had a small paddock, a few cider apples, a hardy pear tree in the middle & two gangly and corrupt cherry trees facing an ancient plum.
Because the field is used for livestock, the plan was to split the field in half, and create a new orchard at the bottom. The orchard needed to include hardy tree-surrounds to deter the hungry & curious beasts. The Duchy opted for chestnut with the instruction that we should include several different fruiting trees and that the planting scheme should be random rather than in lines. The simple wire fence erected to split the top and lower fields has now also had a mixed hedge planted and a new gate. It all seems wonderful to see such radical progress in just a few months!

A Fox on the Table

Currently on the workbench is a Stylized Fox weathervane. He only needs his hindlegs closed and a bit of lead for ballast, to balance out his over-sized tail. I have been concentrating mostly in trying to achieve a sly, foxy look in his eyes. He looks great mounted above a large set of cardinal letters. The idea of a moon (shown in the design sketch below) was discarded once the client opted for a larger size.

The fox is an offshoot of an earlier, and very popular design, the Hare and Moon (featured in an article last year in the Daily Telegraph). The eyes of the fox remind me a little of Mr. Toad, but more so the huge bull sculpture that now resides in Florida. I have a really great mermaid design as well, but there will be little time in the Spring to do anything "exploratory". It's so frustrating to have your head swimming with ideas and never enough time!

Our Christmas tree is up and decorated. Whew! Schools break up on Friday and then it's lots of cozy fires and a little break from all this hard work.

I wonder if it will be a white Christmas? It is certainly blustery with threatening skies.

The end of a project

At the end of every project, the weather becomes of critical importance. After weeks on the studio workbench, a night in the bath, and a morning being scrubbed and waxed, the weathervane goes out to face the day... This is less about checking that it works (of course it works!) and more about getting a good picture. And you usually only get one chance to get it right. You need sun, and little or no wind, interesting clouds and a sense of horizon. I can tell you it isn't very often we are so lucky. The snapshot above was taken, lying flat on my stomach in a sodden field, just as the last of the days sun had disappeared over Stockley Hill. Dare I mention that  this was taken at the end of a 48 hour gilding marathon; "tired" doesn't begin to cover how I felt.

For the official portfolio picture, you will have to visit our webpage heraldic ship weathervane .

This weathervane forms part of a larger project, including a mechanism which turns an internal dial in the house. The client requested the style of this dial be inspired by & reflect the fluid lines

of their bespoke wrought iron staircase by Paul Hodgkiss. Unfortunately the staircase did not exist yet (well conceptually it did, but not actually on paper). We proposed around a dozen random ideas mostly rough sketches. The "chosen one" wasn't much more than a scribble on the back of a scrap envelope...

We wanted to keep the feeling of it being "quick" & "light"...a sketch in copper. I wonder if the gold will give it a feeling of density.

Here it is before cleaning, measuring about 600mm in length.

We did still manage to have Thanksgiving, although only a small one, in amongst this project...I even finished Hound of the Baskervilles. Having lived a mile outside Princetown and on the road to the Grimpen Mire (or the Foxtor Mire as it is actually named), it was quite rivetting to read! Now I am quite geared up to read the Great Gatsby, and perhaps after ....the Grapes of Wrath? We watched the most amazing documentary on Steinbeck. British television has such an interesting angle on American culture. It is quite enlightening to see my country from another point of view. I have given up on ever explaining Thanksgiving though!

Boats as Weathervanes

I have worked on a fair few boats in my days as a weathervane maker. Boats are the second most popular theme amongst historic 3D vanes in England, so there is plenty of inspiration pieces. Usually it is the ornate detail, the rigging & abundance of sail that makes a showstopping boat, and usually it helps if the design is based on a famous and beautiful ship in the first place! 

But ornate design has some drawbacks. Rigging, whilst elegant & beautiful, is also the most likely to show stress over time.  In the case of this client's Swan 431, the whole design was simplified:  a wedge shaped hull, stainless steel sleeving through the whole length of the mast, heavier guage copper for the sails and a few hardy stays. A ship pared back to only the most necessary aesthetic elements, all to prepare it for a life fighting the wicked winds of the Florida keys...

The boat currently on the workbench  will face similar weather, being destined for one of the islands in the Inner Hebrides in Scotland . Here are some snaps of the design being developed. The final image shows the "lymphad" with a red undercoat, in preparation for full gilding.

Ship Shape & Diggers in the Garden

The Sun & Moon weathervane is off to it's new home. We ended up gilding the sun unlike the original weathervane  which was bronzed. The bronze does give a beautiful molten texture, but because this was a larger version, the additional weight at the tail end of the weathervane would have put too much stress on the pivot point.

Work in the studio has been completely focused on the Hebridian lymphad. I don't know why stylized designs end up being so challenging. Perhaps because they rely entirely on the purity of line, something quite hard to maintain with the copper moving all over the place! Elements like the robust hull, and the "straps" that wrap around it, as well as spun copper ball pierced by the arrow, forged brass, and the date in the tail...these are not easy to create. The high heat of the oxy-acetylene seems to "hot box" the brass and exhaust the more delicate copper detail, so warpage becomes a major issue. It is a lovely "fat" weathervane to behold though...so it's all worth it in the end.

I'll post a picture of the weathervane again once it's gilded, but the best I can do now is a silhouette, as our November weather has deteriorated in to dark, wet days:

And for those of you that may have driven by the house and stared in horror at the "bomb site" that is Woodfield Farm, lots has been going on. The scaffolding is still up, but the paint job is finally done (using eco paints). The new orchard isn't planted yet, but the chestnut tree surrounds are in.

However, by far the biggest shock is the removal of the leylandii hedge. Not only is it strange to see all the way down to the road from our kitchen window, but the green grass of the farmer's field is in shreds with all the work. The uninterrupted space is all a bit overwhelming! At least the machinery is marvellous to look at.

Jackie Morris

Friend, artist, author and illustrator Jackie Morris first approached us to make a weathervane based on one of her stories, when we still lived on Dartmoor. The story, called "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" was a wonderful retelling of an old Norse tale.  I remember being told the story as a child, and especially remember the Kittelsen print of the young girl, so upright, riding on Kong Valemon's enormous back.

And why might I be mentioning this now? Well funny enough I am working on a Sun & Moon weathervane, so it was intriguing that Jackie's weathervane should pop up on a Google Search....esp. as there is neither a sun or a moon in the design.

Jackie's story followed the journey of a young girl who must travel East of the Sun and West of the Moon to save her bewitched lover, who is trapped in the form of a polar bear.
The resulting design of a girl riding a polar bear, can be seen on our website or "in action" on this You Tube link. It is interesting to see how the copper has darkened and started to gain a patina.
An avid blogger herself, Jackie can be followed on Drawing a line in time. I love her enthusiasm for including us all in her Process: whether that be the studio, the work itself, her cats(!), her travels, the artists she knows and loves, and all the inspirations that make her work and books so popular.


As an exhibitor and demonstrator, she started her video tour of this summer's Best of the Best tent (2011 Art in Action) with our Montagu's Harrier Hawk.  Thanks Jackie!

Salinger

I bought J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, last year in the hopes of sharing one of my favourite authors with the kids. We even brought it in the Land Cruiser to Cornwall this summer, and still it remained unread. So last week when I was sitting in the truck, glaring downhearted and overwhelmed at the tinstore, trying to work out how on earth (!) we will ever make it work as the studio, it caught my eye.
Now I am the type of book reader that is very greedy. I will read through the night, with one eye open if necessary, and miss a good part of work the next day...all for the sake of a good story. But this book is HUGE! Hugely wonderful, hugely life changing. Read it again. Then read it again.  I promise you Salinger is a genius. I can't work out how we will ever live without books. How they could be replaced with things like Kindels. To hold a book. To own it, have it on your shelf, to open and close it. Remarkable.
On finishing The Catcher in the Rye, I immediately bought Nine Stories, also by Salinger (and The Great Gatsby and The Handmaid's Tale). I always remember Teddy as being my favourite, but in re-reading all nine (in one day. Am I getting any work done?!), the list has completely reshuffled. I mean, who could resist A Perfect Day for Bananafish? Seymour and  young Sybil's conversation is so beautiful and funny and real....when talking of Little Black Sambo:

"Did the tigers run all around that tree?"
"I thought they'd never stop. I never saw so many tigers."
"There were only six," Sybil said
"Only six!" said the young man. "Do you call that only?"
 

Barn Owls and Beacons

I am really pleased with this "standard size" version of our Hovering Barn Owl. It is always a challenge to repeat a design. There is the desire to "improve" the original, and to create something fresh...but that is always tainted with a niggling fear that you won't be able to achieve the magic that caught the client's eye in the first place.

Barn Owl in the Gallery, prior to gilding the cardinal letters

The brass was cleaned with hydrochloric acid. Pretty nasty stuff, but it has the "bite" to remove the blackened braze site. In this case, the client wanted the cardinal letters (N E S & W) gilded, so the letters were primed with red lead.

We use a 12-hour Charbonnel size, and 23.5K double thick, loose leaf English gold. Speaking to master gilder Colin Mullins (who has done work for Anish Kapoor..not to mention numerous historic royal palaces...all the great & the good), he mixes his own size. Colin's work is completely sublime. I have not seen gilding like it.

 The Victorians would have considered a copper  weathervane "naked" without gold. I love the way it picks up all the luscious detail on the surface of the letters. These cardinals will become like a beacon in the sun (and even the moonlight!). Our next commission, a fully gilt Hebridean lymphad (ship or galley) will be the largest gilding job we have undertaken since the gilt Kestrel Weathervane. 

 

So while the size was drying, Gordon and I took the opportunity to climb the most western area of the Brecon Beacons, the Carmarthen Fans. We drove to the parking lot below Llyn y Fan Fach (a glacial lake linked to the myth of the Lady of the Lake) and then took the long way round, to walk the ridge. We didn't see a soul the whole trudge, except the farmer rounding up his sheep, and boy was it windy. Welcome to October! The sideways pelting rain was a bit of a worry, but it only lasted a minute, and then the sun shone back across the ridge giving ample warmth for sandwiches in the fresh air as we descended towards the lake itself. I love the mountains, and didn't we see a lot of red tail Kites!



A Night at the Theatre

The Hovering Barn Owl should be in the bath by the evening, with only the claws to complete today. It is balmy here in Herefordshire, so the doors are wide open, and the wasps are making slow circuits in and out. The Labrador is soaking up the rays. Even the cows are quiet (having spent the last three days bellowing).

Hovering Barn Owl in the Studio

Went to the Courtyard theatre last night with my two oldest boys (teenagers) to see Peter Shaffer's Equus. I am not sure they could quite believe their eyes when the actors got naked! The scene where the horses were blinded was quite jarring; I felt like I needed a little cry afterwards, but very enjoyable. The set was quite simple with six mounted horse heads in a semi-circle, looking down on the play, which took place in a sort of small golden circle. We the audience completed the feeling of "amphitheatre", as the actors themselves sat/stood watching the play unfold. There was a real sense of the horses ominous presence, bearing witness to the story. The heads were quite skeletal/mechanical, Grecian, stylized, and were in turn worn by the actors. It's always interesting to compare ideas like this with our own Horse Head Sculpture.

 I used to paint sets for a theatre company on Martha's Vineyard, the Vineyard Playhouse. This was just after graduating from art school, and I must have been holding down 3 jobs at the time (the days when sleep seemed optional). I remember Lettuce & Lovage, also by Sir Peter Shaffer. It was the first production I worked on. But my favourite was painting the background to Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa...it was a huge endeavor; an enormous painting of the  Irish countryside across the whole of the stage. Completed in a single night's work! We had a huge troop of volunteers on board, but none of us had any training in painting sets. Seems crazy now, looking back.

I think I would enjoy working in theatre again.

Barn Owl and the Whale

Barn Owl Weathervane in Progress

We used the open studio event h.Art, to show-off our new gallery space, which finally has light thanks to a restored mill window from Leominster Reclamation. Removing a section of the second floor has created a sublime space to be in. Lucky weathervanes!

Heat is the hot topic this month, with winter just around the corner & the wood stove still "homeless". We are eyeing the tin-store as a winter studio option (I think the word the Duchy used to describe it was "condemned").

It needs SO much work (who's idea was it to move into this enormous can-of-worms of a property?!).

Still, I stand in there with the doors thrown wide open, looking out at the field & imagine the walls painted white and the wood stove fired up...

The September workshop was a bit terrifying, but a great success. Advertised as a one-day introduction to Metalsmithing, it took students through the full range of our processes. A lot to teach in a single day. I could be heard pushing everyone to "hit it harder" & "really whack it"...wonder what the h.Art visitors in the gallery thought was going on up there! Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, though; lots of laughter & coffee and we had a great smorgasbord of a lunch. Most importantly the work produced was delightful, and everyone wants to come back for more. Watch this space for dates and times.  

So what's on the workbench you might ask (the hints in the title of the blog)? We are on the finishing stretch of a hovering Barn Owl weathervane (he's waiting for his face & talons). And one of our personal favorites from our original numbered series, the Humpback Whale weathervane, is taking shape.   

The Montagu's Harrier Hawk weathervane, which was the star of the show at Art in Action (Waterperry House, Oxfordshire) back in July is now on our website on our new-look Sale pages. 

And lastly, we finally received our copy of the Magazine Antiques (July/August issue) with the article about the American Museum in Britain. There's a fabulous picture of our Lady Liberty Weathervane in the gallery (with it striking "Pompeian red" walls), and all the background to the commission is explained. As it's written by the Museum's curator Laura Beresford, she explains how she found us at Art in Action last year :"...drawn to their tent by the soundscape of hammers colliding with metal sheeting and Karen's mellifluous American accent. A good fairy guided my festival-weary feet that day"...mellifluous? I thought I was just loud!

Galleon Sails off!

The galleon weathervane, which was completed a fortnight ago,  is off to it's new home tomorrow. The custom 10 inch copper ball is gilt with 23.5K double thick English gold leaf.

The project before the galleon was a wild boar. This weathervane design was intended to be whimsical rather than fierce.

The next projects include three large banner weathervanes and a traditional weathercock based on the gilt design on Riga Cathedral...and then there is Art in Action at Waterperry House. Come see our stand/demo from the 21st-24th July.

the American Museum- Celebrating 50 years

Gordon & I were invited to Claverton Manor just outside Bath, yesterday, to for the 50th Anniversary Luncheon of the American Museum in Britain. Perfect weather to drink Pimms on the front lawn and preview the bronze bust of President Lincoln by sculptor Angela Connor. Lady Soames, daughter of Winston Churchill and Honorary Chairman of the Museum, was presenting the Dallas Pratt Commmemorative Medal, and Angela Ahrendts, the chief executive officer of Burberry was the Anniversary speaker.

Lunch was "breast of Guinea Fowl and Confit Leg with a white-wine and Tarragon Jus, baby new potatoes, and fresh vegetable".

 Desert was "Haygrove Farm Strawberries with shortbread and Chantilly cream". Such a treat...and a wonderful way to celebrate the new home for our monumental Lady Liberty weathervane. We also re-visited the Marylin Monroe exhibition and got to see Kate Middleton's famous see-through dress on display.

And home in time to watch the second half of the Nadal-Murray Wimbledon Men's Semi-Final.

on the farm

Well, it's been an interesting half term. With two weathervanes on the table, the children off school and running a busy two room B&B for Hay Festival,  we have scarcely had time to breathe! It's nice to finally take a quiet moment and reflect on what's beautiful around the farm. The cherry trees and the plum tree are hanging heavy with promise...hope to have a bumper year. The sun flowers are growing (I am always impressed when my mere presence hasn't killed a plant), as well as the summer brocolli and the lettuce! The cows in the field spend a lot of time with there heads over the fence staring at us crazy humans. The calves find "hanging the washing" especially enthralling. I try to be as entertaining as possible when I have such an attentive audience.  As the heat of the day begins to ease, we all enjoy watching the little white calf try to rally the soay sheep into a good frolic. He is so emphatically joyful. The motley gang of five sheep are entirely uninterested. They look a bit derelict with their wool beginning to hang off in places (they are "self-shearing"...is it correct to say molting?) like long rogue dreadlocks or bits of seaweed.

We have borrowed the Old Fergie to top the field...boy, those nettles and dock leaves grow like mad!

The gypsy caravan wasn't ready for Hay Festival, but it's bright colours cheer me up when I emerge from the studio all bleary eyed and distracted (that's after I have ducked to avoid the wasps nest that I still haven't the heart to spray).  

And then there's the studio, every busy. The galleon is nearing completion, with now just the sails and the rigging to braze on.

Can anyone guess what this next one will be?

It's actually nearly done now, as this picture was taken almost three weeks ago, but most designs start out looking roughly the same... like a lima bean. Look at the crazy colours in the copper, though. These are created from the heat of the torch, and impurities in the copper and on my workbench. Particularly from the dust from my bronze brazing flux, which is basically Borax. Although we (long ago) gave up trying to achieve these colours, it always feels mildly satisfying when the copper doesn't just come out brown.

Norwegian Independence Day!

For all the Norwegians (or half-Norwegians like me) out there, Happy 17th of May! Do you have your aquavit ready? How appropriate that we are making a galleon, when athentic aquavit should have travelled in casks on ships across the equator twice, in order to age (Linie Aquavit has the details of each bottles journey on it's label!)

If you were guessing about the strange brass implement in our last blog, it is actually the brass infrastructure to the galleon. It was constructed to lock the three masts of the ship to the mainshaft of the weathervane. I learned this lesson the hard way when I was an apprentice.

Our last galleon was done as a sculpture back when we first opened a studio at Cockington Court Craft Centre in 1999!

For anyone who has been following the blog, the final heron photo selection has been made, and a new page added to the website.

The day now feels weird and still...like a storm is brewing or a full moon is about to rise!

The cow farmer next door has put two mother & calves on our upper field. We want them to maybe knock a few nettles down, but they seem more interested in staring at the soay sheep and hanging out in the little wooden shed.

The boys have been having a time of it, retrieving stray footballs from the field with the bull. It think they may be kicking them over on purpose!

Triton's Trident?

What is this strange brass implement, you may ask.

I'll give you a hint. It is the infrastructure for our next project...and no I don't mean the running wild boar.

Any guesses? 

All will be revealed tomorrow.

So we delivered both the heron and the gilt weathercock to their new homes & it was Friday the 13th! We took over 80 photos of the heron, in between rain showers, trying to capture it's glory. Driving to the client's house, Gordon had to pull over on the side of the road a few times, and set up a photo shoot! Anything for a good picture on a blustery day.

The weathercock delivery was also memorable. Hard hats and up five stories of scaffolding , atop a gorgeous restored building, looking out across the most beautiful English countryside. Heights are so exhilirating!

And finally, at around 11pm, we got round to making our scarecrow for the Tyberton village fete. We installed it this morning on the scarecrow trail around the lakes, and Spider (the labrador) got his first ride in the back of the pick up truck and a swim to boot. It's a dogs life.

The Finishing Touches

We put the finishing touches to the heron today. Bronzing the legs is always a bit treacherous, as the molten metal moves in it's own contentious way (almost like lava, it seems to shift, collapse & slump along under the thinnest of "skins").
Fixed the long wispy feathers behind the heron's head (what are these called?), and closed the tummy to the shaft. "She" goes into the bath now, to soak off all the sediment and flux. The brass gets cleaned with acid, and then the whole piece gets waxed with bowling alley wax to make it shine.

I think I have a wasps nests at the door of the studio. Not the best place considering the flag stone steps. It will challenge our "no spray" policy.  It's amazing how many types of bees hover & disappear into the old "Tyberton" brick.
Finished reading The House at Pooh Corner to my youngest tonight. It's always quite strange to re-read something from your childhood...although I was admittedly more of a Pippi Longstocking fan. Can anyone else recite Good Night Moon (Good night Moon, good night room, good night light and the red balloon). Amazing what you find has been lodged in your brain. For some strange reason I can also recite Patrick Henry's speech (It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may call Peace Peace, but there is not peace. The war has actually begun...).

Browsing through our first The World of Interiors. Such a relief to be looking at interior spaces like the Calder Foundation's galleries in New York. Wouldn't you rather live there! With the Miro paintings on the wall and all that lovely white space.

Watch the movie "Once". Lovely Irish film.

Happy Labrador

Our 12 year old Black Labrador loves the water...too bad we're landlocked in Herefordshire. Thank God for the River Wye!


One of the gilt weathercocks we made for Brown's Hotel in Tavistock, has found a new home. The original pair of vanes were commissioned as purely decorative (to sit in the grand front windows of the five star hotel). Based on the weathercock on Riga cathedral, these weathervanes were in fact designed NOT  to function, with the mainshaft  positioned too far back for adequate downwind surface area. One of the pair has come back to the studio to be altered to function and should be installed next week.

Started work on a wild Boar weathervane and a large Galleon. Signed up for h.Art (Herefordshire's Open Studio event in September) and organizing our first course to run alongside the event.

"Metalsmithing Course: a beginner’s guide to copper"


Create three-dimensional ornaments from sheet copper. This one day course will introduce students to repousse metalsmithing. Topics covered will include raising, chasing, pattern making and shaping, with a focus on completing a finished design. No experience necessary. Materials and tools provided. Bring your own lunch. Discounts for attending multiple classes.

Dates: September 10^th (Sat.), 13^th (Tues.), 15^th (Thurs.), 17^th (Sat.)

Time: 10 am-5pm (1 hr. lunch)

Cost: £100 including materials (lunch not included, coffee & tea provided)

Additional info.:  Maximum 6 students, discounts for groups and multiple class bookings.

Tilted Heron

We rowed down the Wye yesterday from Glasbury to Whitney-on-Wye. Rented canoes from a great local company, Wye Valley Canoes who also run the River Cafe. Six hours of glorious river, just blissful and quiet. The herons and sand martins were our mostly companions, and Spider (the labrador) actually learned to sit still in the canoe...whether this was from sheer exhaustion after a few dozen (less than graceful) launches off the side.

Getting rooms ready for Hay Festival, and also our show at the Courtyard comes down on May 1st. The big question is will our new gallery space here in the granary be ready?

Work on the tilted heron is in full swing. After watching so many herons on the river yesterday I am excited to start work on the legs and feet.

We have cocked the design at about a 30 degree angle. It will be a challenge to get the weight right, and will be interesting to see what the wind makes of it.

I love the way it swoops as it turns.

A detail of Liberty and designs for a heron

I was looking through photographs of the Liberty commission, for an upcoming article. It seems so strange now to think the whole winter was dedicated to one peice (albeit a huge one). Nice to see the Craft Council has picked up on the PR, though. We still have the full scale drawing hanging in the studio to remind us of all the work!

It does make the next commission seem not so large...although a full scale heron in flight still presents a fairly complex wing span.

Gypsy caravans and an Elegant duck

The bowtop arrived yesterday...we all crammed in and imagined ourselves somewhere hot. Still mooning over Jeanne Bayol's book. It's in Fench, but the photos are lovely and the colours!!

Finished the little duck weathervane. A bit of a prototype, working this small. Charles Sainsbury-Plaice took a few snaps of it in progress when he came to the studio...I don't think it had it's wings, though.

I like the moodier photo though, because you can see the eye. Light little weathervane.

The calves in the field next door keep sneaking into the garden...I'm glad we have a hole in the hedge now (I am not sure the dogs agree, as it's completely winding them up).

Life after Liberty

Looking through old pictures and found this moody one of our running horse. The colours on the copper are amazing!

March was a crazy month for the studio. We opened our first fine art exhibition at the Courtyard, we delivered a monumental 8ft. tall weathervane (Lady Liberty) to the new Folk Art Gallery at the American Museum in Britain & we met Prince Charles (visited the house & studio).

We also bought a gypsy caravan (check out Jeanne Bayol's book Les Roulottes). March madness?

Finished the red tail kite commission, and straight on to an elegant duck.

 Lots of enquiries from Saturdays article in the Daily Telegraph. The hare was a big hit!
Nice quote too: "For the ultimate weathervane look no further than Greens Weathervanes"