Horatio's Garden

I was today pleased to attend the opening of Horatio's garden at Salisbury District Hospital.
The garden was designed by Chelsea flower show winner Cleve West as a memorial to Horatio Chapple, the young man so tragically killed in Svalbard, Norway, in 2011.
Horatio was an enthusiastic volunteer at the Spinal Injuries unit where his father Mr David Chapple is a highly renowned spinal surgeon.
The memorial garden has given a whole new lease of life to a previously grim yard at the spinal injuries unit and is a complete triumph of beautiful, yet practical design especially with the needs of wheel chair and bed bound patients in mind. I was honoured to have been commissioned to create the memorial stone to Horatio set in the garden pathway.

Please see the Southern Spinal Injuries Trust (SSIT) website/blog below for more details.

http://www.ssit.org.uk/blog-post-view.php?blogPostID=59&blogID=2

Wilson's Solicitors

I'll be exhibiting at Wilson's new premises in Salisbury the eve as part of their re-launch party

Gravestone restoration

Here's a lovely little Portland stone memorial from St George's church, Harnham, Salisbury UK after a little loving care in my studio. The headstone has been cleaned, re-cut and painted and is now ready for re-installation.

Before restoration

Robyn re-cutting the inscription

Carefully painting the letters



The finished stone

Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews

 

Here's a piece of marble I've carved and then painted with acrylics. I've always been intrigued by the lovely texture of these Latin words and felt that they had a really lovely flowing sound to them. I started by using so called 'rustic' Roman letters, but changed the design as I drew it out onto the marble and adapted them for my own purposes.

 

 

    I think I'll probably fix this to my studio wall, which is increasingly turning into a little chapel!

In The Beginning Was The Word

 

A photo of a piece created last year to mark the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King

James Bible (the first authorised English translation). Carved, gilded and painted slate & ash wood.

Elizabeth Barret Browning

This is my design for a quote from the Browning poem which has been rattling round my head for the last month. I did a sketch for a client for the back of a memorial headstone with this quote, but in a very much more formal hand, so then took the opportunity to draw something a little free for my own amusement and then coloured it in with calligraphy ink. I've set this out on a small piece of slate to carve, and may well develop the design further, carving it in a bigger tablet of green Westmoreland slate.

And here is my carving, executed in a piece of black Cumbrian slate. I may well gild 'afire' and 'God', and perhaps carve this again in a pale stone so that I can paint the letters red, as per my sketch above.

Memorial restoration

 I was recently commissioned to restore an old headstone and add an additional inscription for another deceased member of the same family. The headstone shown here (left) was quite heavily weathered, but still in remarkably good order. It was located at West End cemetery, nr. Southampton, Hampshire U.K. and was originally carved in the 1950's from Portland stone by a very accomplished artist. The style is very reminiscent of the school of Eric Gill and I have my suspicions that it may well have been carved by one of his 'Ditchling crew'.
The first step here was to remove the headstone (seen here is my colleague Andy Parsons digging up the stone) and bringing it back to my studio nr Andover for some TLC.

My assistant Karolinka cleaned the carving with nothing more technical than warm soapy water and a variety of scrubbing brushes, (plus plenty of time and patience!) using a fine bronze brush for the details. 

 

The cleaned carving

I set to work cleaning the back of the stone bearing the main inscription using the same method.

 

The partly cleaned inscription, a nicely balanced classical set of text. When fully cleaned and dry the stone is set up on my easel where I carefully pencil on the new inscription to match the style and balance of the extant lettering. All my letter-carving is done by hand, using a zinc-alloy 'dummy' and fine tungsten carbide tipped chisels, most of which I now have made to order by John Parsons of Salisbury, Wiltshire (U.K.) Finally, there were two very fine hairline cracks in the stone which were repaired with a mixture of stone dust and hydraulic lime, coloured to match the stone.

 

 

 

 Here is dear old Andy Parsons out in the rainy British summer setting the headstone back in place. Note the pre-cast concrete 'shoe' footing set below ground level.

 The finished stone, good for a few more years yet, a satisfying job well done.