If anybody has been following us on Instagram and Facebook they will have seen our beautiful new engraved marble sign being created by talented sculptor, Ben Dearnley.
The story of creating our new marble sign
As one of Paul’s oldest friends from school days, and Godfather to our daughter, Georgia, Ben was visiting when he was inspired by a piece of marble we had left over from building our new home. He asked us if he could create a sign for Treseren engraved with our logo. As it was on Emma’s to do list to get a sign writing firm to create one for the new season, Ben stepped in and saved Emma the job of organising it!
Not only was this one thing off of the to do list, but Ben’s approach to hand etching and cutting our logo in to stone would create a beautiful and unique engraved sign. So much more interesting and personal than a generic printed or painted sign.
A special and unique addition to our logo
Ben thought about the derivation of our name, Treseren, which roughly translates as ‘Homestead under the stars’ in Cornish / Gaelic. To encapsulate the star theme, he etched a star at the end of our logo.
Ben shared the idea that he had some special gold leaf paint with him to really make the star stand out. As a family, we love a project and we were definitely all getting excited about the project now!
Getting involved!
The other lovely thing was that from the outset he said he would like to get all four of us involved in carving one letter each and helping to paint the lettering.
It was fascinating to watch the process. Ben did the initial carving of the star, explaining his method and demonstrating the different etching techniques
It was, I admit, quite nerve wracking when handed the chisel. I had the first go at chiseling the star. It was surprisingly easy to make the chisel cut through the marble, I had thought it would be physically harder – so the pressure not to make the wrong mark felt quite strong. Luckily it went OK! Both of our children really loved being given the opportunity to carve – and Paul got in to it the most. Georgia loved painting in the gold leaf!
Painting the lettering
Ben explained the process of ‘flooding’ each letter with gold leaf paint. Essentially the carved indentation would take all the paint, and anything that went outside on to the flat surface would be sanded back for a neat finish.
We loved that Ben added a complete gold circle to our T motif illuminated letter.
Mounting the sign
Ben with the help of our son, Max, chose the curved wall at our entrance as the place to mount the sign, then it was all hands on deck to carry it in to position.
The finishing touches were made in situ.
We are really happy with the complete marble sign and hope all our 2020 and future guests will enjoy being welcomed by it.
There is more though!
Ben didn’t stop there. He also created a second welcoming sign. He had bought a vertical shard of slate with him for the purpose and carved our gold ’T’ in to it with stars above. This he positioned up the drive, amongst the trees and currently among the daffodils. Such a pretty spot as you drive up for your wedding or stay with us, please look out for it.
We have more exciting news about Ben’s visit and work that he has left at Treseren to display in the house and gardens. Watch this space next week for more details!
