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!