Signatures assembled

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Since the 18th of June, visitors to The Brewhouse have been signing their names with a diamond tipped pen on scraps of glass. I have now trimmed them all down and assembled them in the style I had planned. I will be leading this together to make a square hanging panel over the next couple of weeks. There are 103 signed pieces I think (my numbering system went awry) with more than one signature on some pieces, surrounded by a border of clear textured glass. 

You can click on the picture to enlarge it, but you may not be able to read your name against the graph paper background. I photographed two of the practice pieces in daylight outside (below), showing a contrast between white writing on clear glass with a black background and black writing on white glass. It will be interesting to find the best light conditions for the finished piece.

Signatures progress

The current project is progressing well, I have more then a hundred signatures. Above you can see a family who all signed their names using a diamond tipped pen on a piece of white glass. I have picked out scraps of coloured glass in pale and neutral colours for visitors to choose from, so that when I trim the pieces to fit against each none of them will jar or jump out. 

The design for the finished panel is made up of blocks of stripes which follow the dimensions of the signatures. I have started with the darkest colours for the central section, below left. The other photo, from Martin & Wendy Hiscock, I will piece in near the border with other pale bits.

The diamond tipped pen comes from www.bandhservices.co.uk and is called a lunzer lancer pen.

Glass signatures

There are lots of good things in the Red House, Bexleyheath where Jane and William Morris lived after their marriage, including two sets of stained glass windows that seem to have been shoved together in the patchwork style at a later period.  This internal glazed door with scratched signatures, including May Morris', looked very beautiful in the space.

I am thinking of doing something similar with visitors to Kelmscott who would like to leave their mark on a piece of glass.

One visitor this week told me the interesting story of "The Moving Church" in Biggin Hill. This was built in the 1950s by the Vicar, Vivian Symons, from a quite different church in Peckham and he engraved the windows himself with a dentist's drill. Are there any pictures of them out there?