Housestones and Plaques
The best housestones reflects the character or history of a house and the people who live inside. An artist can help you find the right design.
Red Eaves really named itself. The house stood there for ages but never had really acquired a name. The family decided it was well time it did. They thought about it for about a minute but there was really no argument. The windows, trim and eaves had always been painted a glorious “poppy red.” It was obvious this should be the name for the house.
The design for the house stone was similarly pre-ordained. I immediately saw that each of the letters could be pulled in one direction or another to form a pointy eave. This is not true for every letter of the alphabet but these two words had the lucky combination. Its rare for a design to be completed in one go but this stone designed itself.
However, the idea did need some refinement. Its a comic book standard to make western letters pointy if the characters are speaking chinese. I certainly didn’t want that for this lovely english cottage! So, I gave a slight, joyous swing to the descenders and was very careful with the weight of the thicks and thins. The end result has elements of greek, rustic roman capital and yes, a little of comic strip chinese but it feels just right. I painted the letters with the same poppy red paint as was used on the eaves and it looks absolutely lovely.
I cut the stone at the Arts Festival in Lindfield. Sue and Tracey at Masters and Son, organized an exhibition of Memorial Art for the day and I demonstrated lettercutting. While I was there, my friend Tim Whitton came down from London to see the exhibition. He is a lettercutter too, but in wood. He has a fabulous blog, timwhittondesign and is a terribly artistic fellow. Please do have a look at his work.