News

Despite the credit crunch and overall air of gloom, we’re keeping busy. Our friends in the street furniture trade tell us that trade for them is very patchy with less major projects under way. Our sculptor friends still have lots of work but new public commissions are not plentiful.

Here’s a little summary of our recent news:

For the first time in years, we’ve exhibited at shows - Arts Fairs in Buxton and Sheffield. We do this not with the intention of selling anything but to make contacts with artists in different media so that we can learn from other craftspeople and collaborate on projects in the future. The Sheffield Fair was under canvas during the now-traditional August Monsoon whereas Buxton was held in the magnificent Dome - one of the largest unsupported domes in Europe and the source of some incredible acoustics whereby people talking quietly a hundred feet away could be heard perfectly!

Two large architectural metalwork projects have just started (see separate stories for details). These are the creation of a new and decorative cast aluminium open market in Bedford and the complete refurbishment of the famous Brighton Bandstand, adjacent to the gaunt skeleton of the West Pier.

Our bronze foundry is set for a busy six months with a wide range of work - balustrades and grilles for a large house in Cheshire, an abstract sculpture for Coventry, large history panels for Burntisland in Fife and sculptural work for our friends and neighbours Castle Fine Arts.

Signs and plaques continue to provide our bread-and-butter. Recent projects include Welcome signs for Colne Valley in Lancs, new nameplates for locomotives on the Manx Electric Railway, and an attractive bronze for Marple in Cheshire.

As ever, one-off projects continue to materialise. We’re just finishing some brass church windows for a beautiful little church in Warwickshire ; a very early Baguley petrol locomotive is being stripped down for a rebuild ; and we’ve just completed some large ductile iron floor lettering for Silvertown in the East End.

And finally… we had a memory-jerking steam boat holiday in Scotland with Chris Topp of Chris Topp & Co, masters of real wrought iron and Dave Hodgson of Dorothea Restorations. We’ve been friends (and occasionally competitors) since school days - rather more years than we like to count!

Ted & Sue McAvoy, Leander Architectural