Pheasant Weathervane

Copper Pheasant Weathervane

 Many of our weathervanes are commissioned as gifts to commemorate the end of a build,  a wedding, or a big birthday (as is the case with the pheasant weathervane pictured above). He's a reworking of a classic design from the portfolio, with ornately chiseled plumage and bronzed legs.

Over the Moon!

Swan in Flight

We couldn't resist getting our most recent design out in the sun for a photo shoot. This swan in flight is a reworking of an earlier design from the portfolio, and will be available for purchase soon. We started this design at "Art in Action" last year, so only 6 months from start to completion! I love it in silhouette over the moon cardinals. It reminds me of the Felix Neck t-shirt I had in the 70's (did we have the bumper sticker too?)...I am sure their logo used to be a swan silhouetted over the sun. Anyone remember?

More pictures to come!

Layers

The first two layers of the apple's core are now fixed to the brass mainshaft of the weathervane. There is still quite a lot of work to be done, like filling the large gap which can be seen down the left side. Once closed however, the copper parts should assemble quite quickly...all in time for Art in Action in 10 days time? So much to do! 
The weekend was a frenzy of activity, moving the office into it's new space. Went to hear Finn Mackay at the Globe in Hay-on-Wye, and then visited painter James Ursell at his new studio/home in the Golden Valley with it's sweeping views over the Black Mountains.

We are still working hard planning our metalsmithing courses for the fall. In anticipation we are finishing insulating the studio &  rendering walls. Bits of of plaster and dust keep showering down on me today as "Gordon & son" get cracking on the upstairs. This evening we have a big packing job, as the Montagu's Harrier Hawk is back from the museum and off to it's new home. The Trotting Horse will follow on Thursday. 

Working on the Core

The apple weathervane is chugging along! The "body" is now primarily smoothed, although it is never easy to know when to stop and just be happy. The two halves of the large three-dimensional leaf are brazed together with a "rough" edging, giving the leaf a ragged, chunky outline. The leaf has been designed to be smooth and rounded on one side (the side depicting the core of the apple) and deeply veined on the side with the whole apple, creating a striking contrast between the two sides.
 All our attention is now geared toward the apple's core, and trying to get the chisel detail of each layer to emanate it's own character. The first layer is being developed with a ball-pean "ding" pattern which should shimmer in the light. This seemed to be a nice reference to the inside of the apple being white. The ball-peaning stretches the copper, causing it to curl (which can be seen in the picture). This will be flattened out once the texturing is complete.

We have never made an fruit-themed weathervane before, so it was very strange today to receive an enquiry for the (possible) commission of an apple and pear! As I sat hammering I started to imagine making a giant strawberry, which led of course to thinking of one of my very favourite children's books James and the Giant Peach...Roald Dahl is brilliant!

An Apple

The studio is currently working on two new weathervanes, with a big push last week to get both sketches enlarged & finalized as full scale drawings. Great for the current apprentice to see the whole process from concept-to-copper.

The extra-large apple weathervane should be fun, as the idea is to have one side of the vane showing a "whole" apple, and the other side showing a "half" apple. We have been looking at retro apple patterns to come up with a "punchy", layered design for the apple's core. It's amazing how much character the inside of an apple can have! Because the design is large, the focus on achieving robust volume from the "whole" apple has meant some very aggressive, prolonged blows with a ball-pean hammer (I have the blisters to prove it).The result is a rounded & deeply dimpled shape. Creating this shape required two full annealings (and two spot annealings) to soften the copper and coax it into shape. The surface will now be smoothed over the course of the next few days using synthetic mallets. Creating the layers on the opposite side will be interesting, as each layer will need to be braced to the mainshaft and reinforced for strength. Hopefully the two little seeds will appear like gems suspended within these layers. It all proves some of the simplest ideas can be the most challenging!

Golden Hawk in Stormy Weather

The fully gilt Montagu's Harrier Hawk weathervane was photographed in the moments between torrential rain. The sun even made a rare appearance to dazzle us. Yes, it's a bit wet here in Herefordshire. With every break in the rainfall, the animals all get quite frisky, bucking and gambolling and tearing about the place. The birds, the sheep, the pigs, the cows. It's like the picture from  the book "Tim Mouse Visits the Farm". Speaking of books...Hay Festival is starting soon. It's always a great line-up, and well worth a visit. If you need accommodation, we have four large, beautiful rooms available and always cook up a lovely breakfast.

But now it's raining, so it's hard to think about festivals. When it comes to bad weather, it is Tweksbury in Gloucestershire that usually catches the national eye, after the memorable floods of 2007. But on Tuesday, it was our corner of the map that made the BBC evening news after a little drama on the school bus. On it's trip over Stockley Hill into the Golden Valley, the school bus got stuck in waist-deep flood water from the River Dore. Trapped fast in the rushing water, the mini bus had no option but to wait for rescue. An hour and a half later, the fire department did manage to tow them out...and the school declared a "rain day"....almost as exciting as snow!

Today, climbing up Merbach Hill  to Neal's Yard Creamery we got some stunning views of the swollen River Wye. The Wye can be quite an ominous river, even when it's not high, although still considered quite "user friendly" (voted England's best river & getting a few mentions in the book and tv programme Wild Swimming).

Anyway the trip up Merbach was for the creamery's whey. The pigs just love whey...whey and slops and new hay ...happy pigs. It all makes me wish we could get some Nubian goats....

Down to Bath and the Blackbirds leave the studio

All the painting, palladium leafing and gilding is complete on the blackbirds commission. Even the new webpage is poised for publishing, just awaiting the clients receipt of the weathervane.

The daffodils and the magnolia are ready to pop in the garden, so it feels like Spring is about to explode on the scene.

We are off down to the opening of the Compassionate Eye exhibition at Claverton Manor (the American Museum in Britain). Our trotting Morgan horse and Montagu's harrier hawk weathervanes have joined the exhibition, which is of some significance to the studio! Hopefully it will be a nice excursion, especially as driving over the bridge at Bristol always reminds me of crossing the Bourne bridge on the way to the ferry in Woods Hole (MA)...ferry boats make me homesick. And then there is nothing quite like driving South to see Springs progress.

If the arrival of winter is "the hawk has landed", what would the arrival of Spring be?

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.

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.

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!

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"