The Night Mail

W.H. Auden's The Night Mail written & illustrated by Gordon Gordenho

Coit pens or poster pens

Coit pens are American and are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, there is a British version which is the Automatic pen.  These pens are used for poster work and for writing big letters.

Using oil pastel as a resist

White candle wax as a resist

Two colours of oil pastel

Oil pastel top and candle wax bottom

This Coit pen produces two lines, it's often called a scroll pen

Lines of text could be written in the gap using a conventional nib

It's possible to use the very corner of the nib to write small letters

Diamond Jubilee 2012

For the past year the group has been working on a book to give to the Queen to commemorate her Diamond Jubilee with class members past and present designing & producing individual pages. These are the pages before they have been bound into book form.   The pages have been guilded using a variety of techniques employing shell gold, gold leaf, gold gouache and gold ink. The silk for the cover has been machine embroidered and beaded by a class member. Annie is going to make a padded cover using the embroidered silk and she will bind the book. Another member of the class will make a box to keep the book in.    These photographs represent hundreds of hours of work.

Silk cover

The inspiration for this page came from the flowers embroidered on the coronation gown.

This was sung at the coronation.

The edges of the page have been slit and ribbon threaded through.

A bit of bling!

The Yale of Beaufort - one of the Queen's Beasts.

Made in Japan.