A Wishing Tree for Christmas

Sometimes a job comes along that's a bit of a challenge, but turns out beautifully and stretches a few neurons as it develops!

I was asked by Alison Lloyd, duty officer at the beautiful Margam Park, in Port Talbot, Wales, to create a metal tree for the castle on which visitors could hang their wishes. Written on little tags, each visitor would be invited to add their wish to the tree's limbs before leaving.

Having seen the Trysting Tree I designed for the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway, Scotland, Alison's colleague Judith asked whether something similar, but larger, could be created for their castle. I had only designed the Robert Burns tree - quite a small one, at about three feet high - but hadn't had anything to do with its production. So this was to be a bit of a learning curve.

The brief was quite tricky - the tree needed to be made of metal, needed to come apart and be packed away for events throughout the year, and be used indoors and outdoors. It therefore needed to be very sturdy, but light enough for two people to assemble and dissassemble without damaging themselves or the tree!

The tree at Robert Burns was laser cut and powder coated, so I decided on the same route. The Inkymolers in the fortunate position of being friends with the incredibly skilled quartet at metal art fabricators ArtFabs - Andy, Cass, Ant and Rob in Warwickshire, who do things with metal that don't seem possible. Seeing them work with metal is like watching someone fold and cut paper, bending and shaping it into beautiful shapes to artists' maquettes or designing solutions from scratch. They'd just finished building and installing the huge Liver Bird Meccano sculpture in Liverpool, an eye-watering feat of engineering and artistic interpretation, so I knew the first call I needed to make was to Andy, the owner.

Needing to be large enough to have impact but low enough for children to reach the branches, I decided on a 5ft tree in 2 parts, slotting together like an old-fashioned wooden Christmas tree. I drew the tree in ink with a brush, adding the hand-written 'Wishing' lines with a Nikko-G Japanese nib (which allows for both flat, wide strokes and fine lines) so that they made contact with each branch - laser-cutting requires a close eye be kept on any accidental free-floating elements, and joins need to be monitored for laser-ability.

The technical challenge was how to make one part of the tree slot into the other without movement, but also without scratching its opposing part, so I made a series of life-size projections on the studio wall, alongside endless bits of sliced 5mm foam board to get the slot width just right. Additionally, a 1m base was recommended by Andy for extra stability, so slots were incorporated into the base for the four 'legs'.

With the input of local laser cutting firm Subcon, who we'd used before for making modified parts for our cars, we decided on 6mm aluminium, with a powder coated finish. This would be light but strong, and the coating would protect the metal from finger marks. The design was scanned, brought into Illustrator and refined just to the point where it was suitable for a laser cutting machine, without sacrificing the organic, and-drawn look of it. It's too easy to get carried away moving points and fiddling with bézier curved in Ai, and over-smoothing was the last thing this tree needed; while fingers needed to be safe from sharp bits, this wasn't going to have the plasticised look of a lazy vectorisation! I exported to a .dxf file and handed it over to Jaz at Subcon, who checked it pre-flight for cutting, correcting the odd join and wayward spike here and there, and away it went.

Meanwhile white was chosen for the powder coating, and we waited anxiously for the metal to come back.

When it did, we were in for a surprise. Matt at Subcon phoned enthusiastically to let me know that it was finished and in fact, although we'd allowed time and budget for it, we might want to change our minds about the powder coating; having assembled and photographed the finished tree in the sunshine the morning it came off the machine,  it had surely glittered and sparkled its way to a bare finish - and we agreed

Fortunately, the client did too, and having let the powder coaters down gently, the tree went back to ArtFabs where Cass buffed, smoothed off any burrs, and hand-built the tiny bespoke brackets and bolts to hold the two-part tree to firm on it's 1m round base.

A 10 hour round trip to Margam Park in a truck saw the tree installed in the breathtaking entrance to the Castle, where a real robin greeted us by bouncing around among the park-sourced foliage festooning the gargantuan stairs. Christmas lights twinkled in the chilly air as the tree was erected and took its first 'wishes', where it will continue to live throughout the Christmas and new year holiday. I didn't think to add my own wish, but I might post one up for them to add on our behalf!

I want to thank Andy and his team, Matt and Jaz at Subcon for their advice and enthusiasm, Leigh for driving the tree to its destination and finally Alison and Judith for inviting me to make the tree. The challenging jobs usually turn out to be the best ones, and I think everyone is delighted with the outcome - I know I am!

I'm looking for excuses now to build something else in metal; I'm itching to do it again. But maybe bigger...or more complex...or a different metal...or several metals...or...well we need a new Christmas tree, so maybe start there?

The joy of commissioning your mates.

We've got some extremely gifted mates, and there's nothing like the feeling of asking them to make something for you which employes all of their skills, plays to their strengths and makes you the thing you need while maybe, hopefully, testing them a little bit.

I don't get to collaborate all that much in my day-to-day work - with art directors yes, via email and phone, and if we're doing something on a wall, some help there too. But pooling your ideas and desires to make a new piece of furniture, a garden sculpture, something stitched for the home, or even the architecture of your new home and studio, is quite different, and the pressure's on someone else to deliver - which can be really refreshing!

Spencer Jenkins, who lives with artist partner Alisha Miller in Warwickshire, has been a friend for the best part of 20 years and during that time has eased his creativity into a unique space which embraces woodcraft, weaving, alchemy (I mean, the man pickles oak you know?) and complex self-supporting structures coaxed from nature's shapes using patience, pondering and drawing. Carved and steamed wood forms complex, thoughtful and reaching pieces; they're aspirational, comfortable and sometimes challenging, but they're all uniquely Spencer, and are commissioned by the RHS, Gardener's World, Chelsea Flower Show, Hampton Court, Vertigo Records, gardens and institutions the length and breath of Britain...and Black Sabbath.

We have long needed a big sofa to go into the room on our top floor; a long, pointy room which along with the rest of the house is on a skewed rhombus; not a right angle to be found. Pretty much all furniture and storage has to be custom made, and the top room - my studio for ten years - has additional challenges as it is at the top of a winding, steep, narrow, staircase - you can't get anything up there without huge struggle, least of all a sofa. And we need a sofa - the whole of the ground floor is studio and office, middle is sleeping and washing, which means the top floor has finally become our dedicated TV, movie and film space. When we finally put pens/mice down and chill, we need to feel work's over for the day.

The studio as it was. There's just a big telly there now!

This 'thing to sit on' needed to be wide, deep for Leigh's long legs, and capable of being assembled on-site. No flat backs or right angles. We briefed Spence on all this, Leigh driving the direction with his idea around a metal park bench with slats, like this one he saw on a trip to New York:

Spencer started with drawings of 50s-inspired space rockets, all Festival of Britain angles and aspiring points:

His cardboard and wire maquette was extremely cute too:

This blog will massively simplify the many processes Spencer undertook, and what can't be communicated is the incalculable amount of thinking, problem solving and man hours that went into this beast. But we shall begin here; once all feeding-back and chipping-in and discussion had concluded, Spencer enlarged his drawing of the profile of the sofa and laid it on the ground of his workshop, starting to lay the metal bar over the top:

after which it was a case of 'Let Bending Commence!' (which by all accounts was Bloody Hard Work). For those into detail, the metals are a hybrid of round solid steel bar, hollow steel tubing and flat steel bar:

This centre strut was created to make a frame for the wooden slats which would form the sofa:

The sofa's four dainty feet began to emerge, delicately en pointe where they would meet the new black sheep's wool carpet:



and suddenly, the final form of the piece made itself known at full size:

At this point there was the opportunity to powder-coat the structure, which had been done to slick effect on some of Spencer's other commissioned pieces. We thought about it, but were so enamoured of the texture of the metal and the polychroming of the welded areas that we decided to leave it, the evidence of its construction, and seal it in with lacquer.

Spencer picked up on this and experimented with varying levels of heat treatment along the bar:

Perhaps a little giraffe-like, the effect was appealing, and the colours gorgeous, but we felt it yelled a bit over the simple, clean lines of the structure:

Here are the arms being made, in Spencer's Hellraiser-esque bending improvisation:

Once the wooden arms, metal feet, legs and back - in one piece - were created to bookend the structure, the wooden slats were cut and shaped, one at a time. Calculating the spacing was crucial, so that gaps were consistent. This is Ash, and the arms are made of steamed ash (to allow the bend):

And quietly, towards the end of July, the finished 2m wide construction appeared in Spencer's workshop. We couldn't wait to go and bounce on it; Spencer couldn't wait to get it into our loft and out of his space! It had occupied huge chunks of his brain and workshop for months on end, and although he was pleased, I think he was happy to...

...take it apart and build it again. Because of course, the constructed version in the workshop had to be disassembled and taken up to our loft room, one section at a time, and rebuilt there.

Sorry Spence.

Our beautiful sofa is now upstairs on its black sheep's wool carpet, with only a light, little table and big telly for company (oh and my massive book cover archive which I've yet to decide what to do with). The next step is getting removable upholstery made, but meanwhile it's home to our small but growing collection of Japanese-inspired textiles - a Dan Kitchener cushion and throw, a Tenugui print by Nomoco (currently being adapted into a large soft cushion by my Mum, resident guru of the needles) and a grumpy, squishy Gudetama who's in a constant state of judgement - along with three other creatures and assorted bung-it-all-on-there blankets and soft things.

It's a nice place to be, and it's a one-off - we've told him already, but here's a large and fulsome public thank you to Spencer for his problem solving, inventiveness and dedication during a period of total Sofa Rocket immersion. 

It's great to commission a mate.

Pressies.

I had a morning of wonderment and joy the other day. It was like Christmas, but better, because the things that put the smile on my face weren't planned or requested, or expected: they just arrived.

First of all I received a massive box from my friend Amanda, who lives in Providence. Amanda is an all-round creative being and she makes, amongst other things, hand-blown cake stands for single fairy cakes (or cupcakes, as the Americans call them.) She and I did a trade, but her parcel of oddities far outweighed anything I'd sent her way.

First of all there was THIS - a half-sewn half-drawn note. Can't you just HEAR the frantic ZRRRRZRRR of the sewing machine?

Then delving through the padding was this: wahhh! Snakes and a newt! They later had a fight - turtle won with his flip-top-smother-prey-stealth move:

Beetleface leapt out a bit further down, 3" long, but HE was made of stuff we can't identify, with metal bits, and has a magnet stuffed into his belly so he can hang off anything which makes a clonking sound. I tried him on the range flue, but seeing as this can reach 127C at full pelt, I decided melted beetles wasn't a look I fancied.

Enough already? NO. Buried in paper was the magnificent surprise of an Edward Gorey tarot pack - MY WORD. Did I tell her I liked Gorey? No! Did she guess? Can she see it in my face? Shall I tell my own future and that of everyone I know with characters like The Black Doll and The Limb from now on? Yes, I shall.


And all this is before I even get to the cake stand. Here it is - and can you believe, I had JUST made a batch of sticky chocolate ones. Popped one inside. Yum. Amanda must have used special Dorian Gray-style glass to make her stand, because the cakes in the tin turned to mush that night...and the one inside stayed smugly perfect and youthful.

Then my friend Hayley, who normally writes books like this one showed me her drawing of a rhino. It was so good and so captured the essence of a rhino that I dared her to draw a Mole. Now this was bad of me, because my own drawn animals are always deformed beasts of indeterminate species, but she did it. And here he is. Charmed? I nearly cried. Looks at his massive digging hands! His tiny eyes! His surprised sun-struck face! Now that's what illustration's all about - capturing the squinty digness of the Mole. Ten out of ten, Hayls.

And on the same day I received a thank you gift, which are ALWAYS appreciated - even if I can't drink that wine or eat those well-meant chocs - this was received from Laura and was thoroughly spontaneous, made by hand, and reflective of the arts occasion which triggered it!
Thank you Laura, Hayley and Amanda aka Ezz.