John Carr goes gothic: Fillingham Castle Lodge, Lincolnshire.
Fillingham Castle Lodge
Month: April 2023
Newark Town Hall
John Carr was up against London architects when he won the competition to design a multi-purpose civic building for Newark-on-Trent in 1773.
Spaniels
Cocker spaniels Charlie and Lola, who, despite appearances, were born just one day apart, at Nosh, Pickering, this morning. Frothy dog by Nosh barista Becky. Thanks 🙂
Wild Isles
Some of the sequences that didn’t make it into the final cut of Wild Isles.
Black Ponies
Recent iPad sketches drawn in Procreate and Clip Studio Paint.
Pocket Sketchbook
A few more pages from my current pocket sketchbook
Birds by the River
Addingford, 10.30 am: A male reed bunting flits into a hawthorn bush by a pond between the canal and the river, flashing its white tail bars.
Wintering duck have now moved on but a single drake goosander makes its way down the river, diving occasionally as it goes. Later we see a female heading up river.
Swans often nest on the quieter side of the canal but this year a pair have built an island nest on a tennis court-sized pond by the Strands. They’ve built up the nest platform from the dried stems of reedmace, which is now bursting into fluffy masses of downy seed. Slender willows along the banks are dotted with pale catkins.
A pair of grey wagtails bob about on a flooded corner of the The Strands.
Bailey Trees
11.15 am: On a cool, drizzly morning, two mistle thrushes are checking out the well-trodden grass of the play area at Pontefract Castle. One of them appears to have a sash of darker feathers across its speckled breast, perhaps a result of hopping through wet grass. On both birds there’s a white spot on the wing.
John Carr Logo
The wreath has turned out folksy rather than streetwise Hamilton-style energetic but it reads clearly so it will do the job. The ‘300th birthday’ wouldn’t fit in, so that’s going on the plinth below the John Carr cut-out.
Laurel Wreath
I was going to use a design based on the south door of Horbury St Peter’s Church as a frame for my ‘John Carr, 300th anniversary’ logo for the Redbox Gallery display but, as an architectural feature, it would have competed with my model of the spire, so I’m going for a laurel wreath instead.
Towards the end of his life John Carr, who rose to be Mayor of York, was depicted in two busts as a latter-day Roman senator, so the laurel wreath is appropriate.
With his sense of humour, John Carr would probably have chosen to have a putti – a cheeky little angel – floating above him, like the one that beams down from the plasterwork by the chancel arch in his church.
Rather than design the logo on my iPad, which would have enabled me to take advantage of all its graphic features, I’m sticking with the recycled theme and making the wreath from cardboard.