We used to live in the grounds of a monastery, I was, with my wife, artist in residence there for nearly 20 years, we had a wonderful workshop, the monks of this monastery were very generous to us and gave us a very large building in which to house our workshops.
We had just been profoundly blessed by the birth of our only child, and it was she who inspired me to start many projects aimed at making her soon to be crèche, a little more interesting.
One end of the building was our paper marbling studio; it was a very large room.
I carved smiling fish into the rough plastered walls and gilded them with golden leaf which is what I called the gilding compound I made from bronze powder and imitation gold leaf.
We had a lot of off cuts of 3mm grey board a material we used a great deal of, and so I started the biggest project of them all, one that would take me 7 years to even approach completion.
I was going to build a model castle, but at that time I had no idea how big it was going to be.
I didn't work on it all the time, but I did find several hours each week.
The castle ended up 11 feet high and taking up 5 square yards of floor space.
It had dozens of pathways, all of them gilded with golden leaf, the idea was based on the old Victorian marble run for children, except my marble was a 1 inch diameter ball bearing.
The castle had electricity!
I had to have a transformer made as the electrical fittings drew a total of 9 amps.
Their were lights and electric motors to drive lift mechanisms.
When the pathways turned a sharp corner their were copper contacts and as the ball bearing touched these contacts it made various things happen, lights in the turrets would flash, a witch would be seen silhouetted in a window and cogs and wheels would turn.
At the top most turret was a dragon suspended on piano wire, at certain times it would "fly" around the turret, the turrets were all gilded with golden leaf in a varnish.
When the ball bearings had completed their journey they were taken back to the top by a small lifting mechanism and the process repeated.
I knew as I was building it that it would never be able to be removed from the room it was in.
Four years ago we decided to move from the UK to France to give our daughter a better quality of life, which meant we had to close our workshops.
The castle was broken up and burnt and is now just a memory, though caught in photographs. But the castle with its golden leaf turrets was there for our daughter all the way through her childhood, she grew up with it and she will never forget it, when she was very young It literally towered over her, she would sit and stare as the lights flashed and the witch appeared and the dragon flew around the tower.
For 25 years Richard & Margaret Norman ran the Eden Workshops, a diverse system of workshops and studio, that practiced the most esoteric range of craft skills.
In 1994 the workshops were nominated a National Living Treasure for its contribution to the Book Arts.
www.gold-vault.com
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