NGS at Penhaligon Case History
This was a fantastic project – such a lot happened in a short space of time. with so many great people alongside. Jack was on week 3 of his apprenticeship and already holding it down.
“Meeting Chris Jenner was a high spot during this 4 day site project.
The whole interior theme comes alive with colour, interesting organic forms, near-far spicy cultural accents and eclectic style.
It is a beguiling marriage that allows Chris to continually inspire retail interior trend. NG
Case history
The clarity and sparkle of this classical gilded window was entirely down to the passion of myself and Jack. So wanting this window to be the best I’d made in my 32 yr career – Jack for his desire for new insight into reverse glass mirror gilding. Nothing other than a fine piece of new classical crafted jewellery for this one.
Method: The Paint
The specialist signwriting enamel had 2 additions for even greater adhesion: Oneshot hardener and Handover’s glass enamel matt. Combined they create a fantastic bond.
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The 3mm outline and font architecture
I used a new technique of painting the 3mm main lettering outlines: the outline was divided into inner and outer segments – a 2mm inline with an outer clean 1mm wrap forming 1 perfect 3mm line on all curved segments. Not many can do this (we call it atom splitting 🙂 but the result is super fine tension, beautiful flow on the eye and clean accuracy. It kind of gets down to the core purity of it!
The font had a number of curious anomolies … unexpected twists in serif weights and styles. There was the keynote fine fluted slabs but then a certain glyphs they changes to goose billed calligraphic thorns.
The descents became marked and accentuated creating a taut gothic Englishness…
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The Gold Leaf
The Cornellison’s 23ct English Victorian gold leaf batch we had was absolutely sublime and heavy (which is not always the case) so it made the gilding really slick and a pleasure – Jack gilded the smaller text perfectly too.
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Backing up was a good place for Jack and Beth to practice on a few letters.
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Finish
The final clean off was really quite tough because the gild had such a high bond – a good thing but it was really intense because the clean can sometimes damage the outline – but this one was perfect because of the hardener and matt glass enamel (redeye added as I didn’t want to miss my flight that final morning!).
Leaving site at 8.30 am on the Saturday morning and I think the last thing I said to Jack was “Don’t fuck it up!!” He did a spot on final clean up bless him.
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Design draft: Colin Appleton, Nick Garrett
Outline, Gilding, Back-Up, Clean: Nick Garrett
Assisted: Pre/Post Clean, Gild ‘London’, Back-Up Paint – Beloved Apprentice Jack Hollands.
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Special thanks to Christopher Jenner and team.
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