Selwyn & Ink
After several requests, and given that we are nearing the festive season, I thought I would finally try my hand at developing a cross-stitch pattern! The results can be found here and below is a gif of the unrestricted palette version (you’ll need 95 colours!!).
Rough and ready take of overflying Dunans, showing the cleared castle and practicing for detailed aerial survey! Unfortunately the quality is also rough and ready, but you’ll still get a feel for the height and shape of the castle as well as the plan of the interior!
Graphic and product design has always been a passion of mine, particularly in relation to restoring Dunans (of course!). Our new red boxes are spectacularly lovely, and I just wanted to share the design (and the rest of the package) which includes a square foot of the castle itself. If we can sell every square foot of the castle, we will be able to restore the building fully. So that’s the target for the next 12 months or so.
The clearance of the back two compartments of the castle has taken much longer than the others, simply because they aren’t accessible by the minidigger and there’s not enough room for more than a couple of workers. Our luck continues with the floors, which are all concrete, making clearance much much easier than suspended floors.
If you want to help with castle or bridge we have two volunteer fortnights in May 2020 and September 2020 – available here.
All about the progress we’ve made this month, including a walk around the castle and under the bridge.
Our AIP Jammers have been working incredibly hard and the results have been fantastic. Eland Stuart has been teaching a variety of skills including washing out joints gently and using lime slurry to provide a keying texture for vertical joints!
Day one: lots of clearing out joints, discussion of approach, and above all, lots of learning about rubble-built structures.
Readers will be aware of my ongoing design and illustration work, as well as installations and videos I have produced over the years. Last year, inspired by a series of illustrations I produced prior to delivering a show in Birmingham, I launched Selwyn & Ink a portfolio website and overall brand to encapsulate this work and separate it from ScottishLaird and Dunans Castle. The website is available here.
We wanted to do something different with our signage, refresh it yes, but more than that. Reflect our ambition, create something familiar yet original. I think we’ve done it. (Please ignore the calibration and cropmarks!)
