Flawed
Today I drew up more templates for the New York job. Extracting dimensions from the architect is like getting blood from a stone. I’ve asked ten or eleven times. Sometimes he generously sends me AutoCAD drawings, but I don’t have the ACAD programme, so I can’t read them. My assistant Monica worked in an architect’s office. She kindly agrees to look at them when she gets home, but her version of AutoCAD is old and incompatible. I e-mail the designer in Paris. He e-mails the architect in New York. The architect e-mails me in London. I explain the problem and he sends me PDFs with no dimensions at an indecipherable scale. And round we go again. So now, the floors are complete, and I have everything bar the dimensions of one wall. This evening I finally received the drawings from the stone supplier in Italy. AutoCAD drawings with no dimensions.
‘I found this when I was making alterations to our house’ said someone in our village recently, showing me a carved wooden sheaf of corn. ‘They used to build them into the walls, as a hidden symbol of fertility and plenty. I thought about selling it, because it’s really old, but I worried that if it left the cottage maybe things would start going wrong.’
He’s been advising us about the studio floor. We’ve made various transformations and the walls are now insulated, although we can’t afford to do the floors yet, and the wind whistles up between the boards. We’re discussing what to do now. ‘Look at these holes here’ he said. ‘They’ve been covered with the bottom of old cans, and secured with a ring of nails. Instead of replacing floorboards with holes in them, we could patch them with decorative circles of copper, to match. What do you think?’
‘Genius’ I said. This was where hats and clothes were made when the house was still a grocer and a drapers shop. Matt and I went up and inspected the floor again later, and found various holes had been covered with hob nails – the kind people used to wear on their boots. I like that technology.
Love the tag “superstitions in East Anglia.” Whatever happened to blue line drawings with all the specs on them? Something that could be put into the mail. Argh.
hi Emma, I love the hobnail patching. It reminds me they have done this on the bridges in Muir Woods amongst the big redwoods here. I believe they’ve used a galvanized steel, not copper, it is so pleasing, the odd metallic shapes, neatly nailed.
Oh, I thought the tags were just a game I played. I didn’t realise anyone ever noticed them! Feeling a bit uncomfortable about the tag ‘very good mosaics’ but we’ve all got to make a living.
I can’ see how you’d feel uncomfortable about “very good mosaics” Should read “stunning, amazing mosaics.”
That was soooo American, wasn’t it?
Still, your work is revelatory, Emma.
We’ve got hobnail patched on the dock were I live: silver squares of galvanized sheet metal that are a little to small for the holes they cover.
Hi Lilian, Do you think as mosaicists we are particularly attuned to the attractions of patching?