Gothic Kitchen

I'm not the type of girl who likes modern, fitted kitchens. When we first moved in, the kitchen hadn't been updated for decades. It had bright yellow melamine worktops and base cupboards with plain, wood-effect melamine doors. The only wall cupboards were a trio above the sink. All the woodwork was yellowed, white gloss.The blue carpet was nasty and full of grease in the cooker area. Even I couldn't live with the kitchen as it was. I wasn't really sure what to do with it, but I knew I needed to rid myself of the carpet and replace the worktops. The old, leaded light window had a blue, stained glass cross in the centre. I don't really like the colour blue, but the cross rather dictated the use of it. 

The carpet was ripped up and replaced with vinyl flooring which had a blue motif on a cream background and I chose a mottled blue and black worktop to replace the yellow ones. Over time, the walls and cupboards were painted various colours, including pink and cornflower blue. I added pine strips to the cupboard doors to give them a bit of texture, replaced taps and cupboard handles all in an attempt to make the kitchen more me. I was given a load of wall cupboards, which I had installed and then painted to match the base cupboards. I have lost count of the different looks the kitchen has had. Nothing was quite right though. Then one day, we were driving past a vintage furniture shop locally and I caught sight of the most gorgeous dresser. It wasn't particularly old but I just fell in love with it. It was a beautifully carved and painted 'Gothic' pine dresser in a stone colour and distressed at the corners and edges. We bought it and it was the inspiration for the whole kitchen transformation.

Dresser Top

Dresser Base Cupboards and Drawers Which Inspired Me So.

The Cupboards

Obviously, I coudn't start carving melamine copboard doors so I had to think of a way of transforming the plain doors into 'Gothic' ones. There were already pine strips around the edges and the .Gothic. embellishment would have to be applied within. I decided upon different thicknesses of MDF. It is easily available and could be cut into shape or drilled to get the effects I wanted. The first layer was the same thickness as the pine strips to blend seamlessly and the second layer  was thinner. The quatrefoils were cut out using round cutters attached to my electric drill.

These are the cupboards below the sink area and have a space between the drawers and the cupboards which I filled with a strip of MDF with quatrefoil cut outs. I found some lovely antique brass handles I liked and made little back-plates for them. The paint is Edwardian Lemon Eggshell, which I distressed and 'dirtied' using woodstain and  a rusty-red eggshell. I couldn't achieve the exact colour of the dresser, but close enough. Every pair of cupboards is a different size to the rest, so each gothic arch had to be made individually and would only fit one cupboard. 

The very top of the dresser had some detail which I wanted to try to immitate on my top cupboards. They were originally just flat with nothing above the doors. Luckily, I cam across some packets of wood-coloured plastic coving being sold off cheaply in B&Q. I could use the coving to create a similar effect.

I couldn't re-produce the shapes at the top easily, so I used a strip of quatrefoil cut outs instead.

I can't remember the exact order everything was done in. The whole project developed over several years and unfortunately, I didn't take 'before' or 'during' pictures to show you the progression. Everything has been changed from the floor to the worktops and eventually up to the ceiling, as shown on my first blog entry,
https://sarahmanchestersculpture.blogspot.com/2019/05/kitchen-ceiling-panels.html.

The Colour Scheme

At some point, the blue leaded light windows were replaced, and at last I felt able to completely rid myself of everything blue. Green and Red are  my favourite colours. My kitchen was going to be different shades of green. The colours chosen were  authentic period colours, not all from the same period, but all complimentary to each other, by Craig and Rose. I took them all from their 1829 range and chose acrylic eggshell finish for everything, even the walls. Being in the kitchen, the walls need to be able to take a good scrub and lots of steam. Apart from anything else, eggshell really goes a long way, so a small tin covers as large an area as a large tin of emulsion. Being acrylic, the eggshell paint didn't have a strong odour, unlike the paint used on the cupboard doors which was oil-based. The walls were painted in Eau de Nil, a lovely, pale green used in the Art Deco period in bathrooms and kitchens. The wall behind the dresser was chosen as a feature wall and I painted this and the tiled areas behind the sink and cooker in a slightly deeper Tapestry Green. It was a very popular colour in Victorian houses and was a green found in 19th Century tapestries. Finally, all the woodwork was painted Deep Adam Green, a Georgian colour often found in buildings designed by the Adam Brothers. Oh yes, when I came to put a Gothic border around the top of the walls, I used a very dark Winchester Green, so named as it is found in the tapestries hanging in Winchester Cathedral. Skirtings were all painted in black masonry paint, which has a soft satin finish and most of them are concrete anyway.

The Doors

Each of the three doors is different from the others. As far as I can tell, none are the original house doors. The first one I tackled was a replacement fire-door made of hardboard both sides and hollow. No detail whatsoever upon it. Just flat and smooth, utterly boring. MDF to the rescue! I used wide strips to create panels and Gothicised the whole thing. I even found a gorgeous Gothic door pull supposedly from a church building or chapel, in brass and copper, two of my favourite metals and found all over the house. From plain, flat, white-glossed door to this;

The second door was a pretty boring glazed door which would have led to the outside, before a lean-to was added. Some years previously, I had found three stained glass roundels, removed from a church and bought them with a view to finding a use for them one day. They had been languishing in the loft for several years, almost forgotten. They were perfect for turning the side door into something more interesting. After Gothicising the top of the glazed door with thick MDF, I glued the roundels down the centre of the glass. The light shines through them and shows the beautiful colours, all of which are used elsewhere in the room. They have two shades of red, two of amber, and three shades of green in them. Nothing could be more perfect. The glass in the door was not opaque enough and showed too much of what was behind it in the lean-to for my liking, so I bought a product which 'frosts' glass and sponged it on the outer side of the glass. It worked very well.

       

 I found another very old door pull, larger than the first and appropriate for an outer door, equally Gothic in old brass. 

 

Even the catflap on the third door got the Gothic treatment

At a later date, I came across this old print and really wanted it in the kitchen but had run out of wall space. The door to the Hall seemed the obvious choice.

The Feature Wall

I had enormous fun painting the feature wall either side of the Gothic dresser. I must confess, I did not bother to paint the design behind it. There was no point. The dresser cannot go anywhere else in the room and the wall cannot be seen behind it. I designed the mural to start at the edges of the dresser and the corners of the walls and work inwards from those edges to meet in the middle. The whole wall, including behind the dresser was painted in Tapestry Green Acrylic Eggshell. The design was painted using Artist's acrylics. I used the colours straight from the tubes, no mixing involved. I started with a feature border which stretches across the whole width of the wall. The design was taken from one of my favourite books, Pugin's Gothic Ornament, the classic Sourcebook of Decorative Motifs by Augustus Charles Pugin in the Dover Press Pictorial Archive Series,  as were all the motifs for the feature wall. The design was photocopied and enlarged and transferred to the wall using carbon copy paper.

The rest of the wall was hand-drawn using pencil onto the wall with the following small motif as inspiration. Additional creatures were incorporated into the design. I loved this process and just went with the flow. If I made a mistake, or didn't like something, the pencil was easily erased and the design remedied. This didn't happen much, happily.

I used this picture to start the design next to the dresser on the right as I was looking at it. The original drawing in the book  is only 4" long. Rather a small sample to inspire a whole wall.

These are the additional creatures incorporated into the design. To finish, I painted flying insects into the spaces, each one individual and more fantasy than real.

This shows a detail of the wall on the left side of the dresser. It is a much narrower strip and at a later date, the self-portrait sculpture was added. A few insects have escaped from the feature wall onto adjacent walls. Just one or two. I like to get Luncheon guests to paint their own insect on a spot they choose, using black acrylic which I later fill-in with green. In this way it is a living thing and forever in progress.

The Pugin  Tiled Backsplash

The tiles behind the cooker and sink areas had been painted over before we came to the house. It was a very hard-wearing scrubable surface with a slightly speckled finish. Goodness know what the paint used was but the whole kitchen was painted with it and it remains underneath the various layers I have added over the years. I'm not particularly a fan of modern tiles. I did toy with the idea of replacing the painted tiles with dark green ones but they would still be too plain. I love Victorian tiles with their wonderful patterns. I decided to leave the painted tiles in-situ and paint a design over them. I found a design I liked, copied it and transferred it to the wall with carbon paper then painted it freehand using an acrylic-based metal and wood paint which is very hard-wearing and can be cleaned thoroughly without wearing off. The red flowers were painted using acrylic stamp paint which can be used outside and is more durable than Artist's acrylic, I think.

Tiled Area Behind My Kitchen Range

The tile surrounds were made in plaster by a local company using original moulds. They feature Puginesque leaves and grapes, which I love. When I came to decorate the sink area, I decided to make a sculptured panel rather than just paint the tiles and I wanted to use the same border. I only had one strip of plaster moulding left so I made a mould using latex rubber and a plaster mother-mould and cast the extra pieces I needed.

The Dolphin Frieze

The design for the frieze was put together from pictures of old wood-carvings. I modelled it in clay on a long piece of board. I used my by now favourite method of mould-making of latex rubber and plaster mother-mould and cast it using Ciment Fondu. Fondu is very hard when cured and can be cast in very thin layers making large sculptures hollow and very light comparatively. As the frieze is fairly shallow, I cast it solid. Usually Fondu is cast straight into a plaster waste-mould but the frieze has some very delicate areas and chipping off the plaster might have caused a lot of damage. As it happened, there was only one break across a very narrow part. However, to attach it to the wall, I had to break it into three parts. I hadn't thought about how I was going to attach it to the tiles. In retrospect, I should have made it with a backing and stuck the whole thing up in one, solid piece. This would have been a little problematic in itself as I had very little depth to work with and even less with a backing. I attached it using tile cement and painted it using the same metal and wood paint as on the splashback. Now, sadly discontinued. Such a pity as it was fabulous paint and very hard-wearing.

Clay Original Dolphin Frieze

Frieze Detail Left

Frieze Detail Centre

Frieze Detail Right

                                                                       Painted Frieze 

Above each of the cupboards, on the wall, near the ceiling, I have placed a Green Man Plaque. I bought six originally but needed nine so I made three of my own and painted them to match the others. These were modelled in clay, moulded and then cast in plaster.

As for the rest, I installed dark green and black marbled worktops, dark green slate effect vinyl floor tiles. I found two antique brass chandeliers to replace the plain bulbs either end of the kitchen. Two more large Gothic pieces of furniture were squeezed in. One a sideboard, the other a cupboard. Both in limed Oak, which I waxed over in Tudor Oak. Original works of art and Victorian Pre-Rapaelite prints cover a wall adjacent to the feature wall.  Finally I worked for two years on the ceiling. I love it. It is unique. I think I have finished now. In case you haven't seen the ceiling tile post. Here a a few pictures to be going on with.

Sacred Heart Restoration

I fell in love with this beautiful Victorian statue the minute I saw it. Unfortunately, its lower arms and hands were missing and I wasn't too sure if I was up to the task of replacing them. I had a little think about it for a while. I couldn't get the exquisite face out of my head and the next time I saw it, I couldn't resist. I had looked at images of removable hands on statues on the internet and thought I could probably do equally well. Hands are notoriously difficult to model and apart from the small repair to the hand on St. Joseph, I had never modelled hands before. I started to get excited about the challenge. It is all about frame of mind. When I first saw the it, I wasn't in the right frame, obviously, because I left it behind. A couple of weeks later, it's a different story. Also, I had only just completed my kitchen ceiling project  and was creatively drained. I needed those weeks to recover myself. Now I wonder how I could have been so stupid as to risk someone else buying it. I would have kicked myself if I had lost out. However, no-one else did buy it. Perhaps it was just meant for me. 

Originally, I had thought I could match the paint colours and touch it up where necessary. I didn't think the paintwork was too bad. Upon close inspection, in the good light of my sun-lounge studio, I could see rather more work was needed. There was extensive damp damage and even where paint had not already flaked off, it was about to. A light sanding to smooth flaked areas down brought off more and more flakes. I must admit, I was a little disheartened. I probably let out a sigh too. Or was it a groan? I remembered the messy nightmare of stripping down the St Joseph using paint stripper. Did I really want to go through that again? NO, I did not. The most pressing matter was to get the hands modelled. They would be cast in plaster and would need time to dry out thoroughly before painting, so I put the flaking paint to one side for the time being to concentrate on something more enjoyable. A new challenge. There was some damage to the sleeves where the hands would slot in, so I set about repairing them first.

To keep the original shape inside, I rolled a piece of plastic, cut from a kitchen food chopping mat, and placed it inside the cavity.

The repair was made with good old decorator's filler. I mix the dried powder to a putty-like consistency which is easily sculptable . To reduce the amount of sanding necessary,a damp paintbrush is the perfect tool to refine the shape and smooth the surface.

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Both sleeves were repaired in this way and while I was at it, I repaired other parts of the drapery which had pieces missing, although, given the age of the statue, they were very few.

The Hands

It was important to sort out the position and length of the arms and  the scale of the hands. I followed the line of the cavity to determine the position, after all, the arms wouldn't suddenly change angle below the point of the elbow. I used some pipe insulation foam and made 'hands' from tin foil to show the size and position, manipulating them until I was satisfied.                                                                         

I started the hands off by making 'sausages' for the fingers, blending together at the palm and then adding a piece for the thumb at an angle. I had a wire running through the middle to support the wrist, which would be too thin to support the weight of the hand alone.

I used my own hands to model from, constantly observing lengths, joints etc.  It was rather a slow process over several days, as I hadn't modelled hands before.

I kept adding small balls of clay to build up the knuckles, joints, pads on the fingers etc.

 I continued to manipulate the clay until I was happy. At first, the fingers were rather splayed, but by the time I had finished, they were closer together although still very much individual fingers. I experimented with moving the fingers to create movement in the hand.

The sleeves were made separately to the hands. I pushed soft clay into the arm cavities which I has lined with cling-film, and secured them in position with wires through the original holes in the robes. This is how the original arms would have been secured to the statue.

Once secured, I built-up the sleeves to the required length and fashioned the garment folds. The wired hands were then pushed into place and the joins 'stuck' with clay wash. They were left overnight to dry out a little. The next day, I started to make the mould. The hands were removed from the cavities and stuck to a flat base of clay

Although the hands were made for this specific statue, and I only needed one pair to be cast, I decided to used Latex Rubber with a 'mother' mould . I was afraid of shattering the cast if I used a plaster waste mould. The fingers were very vulnerable and chipping away the plaster would probably break them. This way, I could remove the 'mother' and gently cut away the rubber from the delicate fingers, leaving them intact.  I painted the thickened Latex onto the clay and left it to dry.

 

Latex Rubber is a very economical medium for mould making and I often use it. It can be painted on with a brush, or original pieces can be dipped into it. Very fine detail can be captured, especially if the first coat is not thickened. The mould is built up to the correct thickness in layers. The hands only needed a fairly thin rubber layer so I painted on two coats of thickened Latex. It goes on white, but dries to an amber colour.

   

Clay wall added with indentations for keys   

The two halves of the mould were made fairly thinly as the hands required only a little support from the mother .   After a couple of hours, the halves were prised apart and the rubber moulds peeled away from the clay hands. I rinsed them out to remove any clay residue and returned the rubber moulds to the plaster 'mothers' , ensuring the two halves were correctly aligned. 

The first hand casting was a bit of an experiment. I was concerned about the fragility of the individual fingers so I attempted to reinforce each one with thin florist's wire. I did my best to bend each wire to the shape of the finger as it lay inside the rubber mould. I supported the mould in a plastic jug and wedged it upright before pouring in the casting plaster. Before the plaster was quite set, I pushed in a thick piece of garden wire looped at both ends to help secure the hand into the statue cavity.

                                        

Unfortunately, the cast was a failure. The plaster broke away from the wires which had not remained in the correct position inside the fingers. I started again. I dispensed with finger wires and just put a single thick garden wire through the hand into the middle finger and looped the protruding top end to enable a strong connection to the cavity later. When the plaster had set, I gently peeled away the rubber mould, cutting along one side to make removal easier and reducing the stress on the plaster.

This method worked quite well although a few of the fingers did break, even so. Notice how the two middle fingers, with reinforcing wire inside, remained intact. I was not disheartened, however. It was an easy fix.

I drilled small holes into each side of the break and inserted short lengths of thin garden wire. Both edges of each break were scratched, to form a key, then squished into position with fresh plaster.

The repaired hands were then placed back into the mother mould for support until dry. The piece missing from one of the fingers was filled later. The fingers on this hand were thinner than the other. Too thin. I mixed up some casting plaster and while it was still very thin, dipped the fingers in a few times until the correct thickness was achieved. This worked remarkably well. The thin plaster clung to the fingers following the contours perfectly.  I might try this method to make hands at some future date, just to see.

The Boring Bit

While the hands were drying, I turned my attention back to the paintwork. The creative process of making the hands had refreshed me and enabled me to begin the boring and tedious sanding down of the paintwork. Much of it flaked off easily and the rest was painstakingly hand-sanded. The job became unexpectedly interesting when I was working on the cloak. As the paint layers were removed, original Victorian details were revealed. 

Before Sanding

After Sanding

The most exciting moment came when the floral motifs were revealed on the thighs. They had been completely masked when the cloak was painted red. I had thought the red was original, but after revealing the motifs, I am of the opinion the cloak was originally cream with the gold motifs and black scalloping around the bottom edge. The stripe was gold and set back from the very edge.

Sanding Complete

  

The Halo

The statue would have originally had a metal halo, There are two holes in the head for fixing. I scoured the internet for something appropriately ornate and downloaded a few pictures to choose from. There was really only one that stood out from the start, and it was the one eventually chosen.

I drew a quarter of the design onto paper and repeated it to make the whole, ensuring each quarter was the same.

I decided to make the halo from rolled-out paper clay. It was rolled to the correct thickness and left to dry. As it dried, the began to warp and curl, so I placed weights all around the edge to keep it flat. It took a week to dry, being turned daily so each side dried at the same rate. This also helped to keep it flat.

I divided the circle into 16 sections to help keep the design symmetrical. The dried paper clay takes pencil very well and is very easy to draw onto.

I used copy paper to transfer the design onto the dried paper clay disc, using the 16 sections to help position each quarter correctly. There were a few adjustments made, but overall, this method worked very well.

Even though the disc is made from paper clay, it is very strong and although it will cut with a craft knife, the design is so intricate it would be very difficult to cut out the detail with a knife. I used a very small drill piece in my rotary drill to drill tiny holes around all the edges of the pieces to be removed. then I used the edge of the drill bit as a cutter going from one hole to the next. This achieved quite a smooth finish to the edges with little further sanding required.

I didn't like the tooth-edge on the original metal halo I was copying. I thought it looked too much like a cog. I altered the edge to look like flames, which I much prefer. The halo was refined and engraved using engraving bits on the rotary drill. I have a nifty flexible extension which enables me to hold the drill bit like a pen when working, with the heavy main drill body suspended from something nearby. I used the handle on a camera tripod set up next to me. The detail could have been carved by hand using lino cutters or small wood-cutting tools.

I embellished the front of the halo with paper clay balls and squares of rubber foam. The holes for the fixings were drilled after being marked using a paper template taken from the holes in the head and nails pushed through. The sharp nail points were removed using a hack-saw.

The halo was then painted with two coats of gold metallic wood and metal paint on both sides. As you can see, the halo was left without embellishment at the bottom as this is the part touching the shoulders and hair and would not sit flat with embellishments present.

Back to the Hands

The hands needed to be fitted before the statue was painted as there would be wet plaster  involved and I didn't want to risk getting on newly painted robes. I wrapped cling film around the statue below the arms and pushed a layer into the cavities to stop the plaster sticking. I wanted to be able to remove the arms as with the original. This would just make it safer when moving the statue from one place to another. The moulded hands were already almost the full shape of each cavity. I had left just a little space to fill for the final fitting.

The hands were first positioned inside the cavities and the line of the holes in the robe followed with a drill bit through each arm. A piece of wire would hold each arm nicely in position as they dried. I slathered some thick, wet plaster on the end of the arm and squished it into the cavity. The arm was still a little loose, so I pulled it out and added a little more plaster around the arm before squishing it back inside the cavity. I pushed the wire through to hold it in place. Now, that was a mistake. Where the wire had pierced the cling film after the first fitting, the new plaster must have seeped through. I could not remove the arm once it was dry. I tried to wiggle it out, but it was stuck fast, even with the clingfilm. To make sure it was completely stuck, I decided to scrape away some plaster ll the way around the arm as deep as possible, pulling away the cling film as I went. Then I re-filled the gap with fresh plaster. I cut the wire off level with the robe the process of which made the hole a bit larger, filled the hole with plaster and smoothed it level with the robe. This would be invisible once painted. It didn't really matter that the hands would be permanently stuck in position. Even though it had been my intention otherwise. I secured the second hand after removing the cling film inside the cavity, still fitting a short wire through for extra security and filled the robe level.

As you can see, the arms fitted into the cavity revealing the outside edge of the original level of the sleeves as seen on the left of this picture, the right hand of the statue. I added a thick mix of  decorator's filler to deepen the sleeves as you can see on the right of this picture after scoring and wetting the arm. I smoothed it and sculpted the shape with a wet paintbrush. By the time I had finished, the sleeves looked an integral part of the original statue with no visible join.

It was at this point that the halo was cut out of the paper clay disc, while the additions to the hands were drying. Before it was painted, the halo was positioned on the head. I had to make a few holes before I was happy with the positioning. The extra holes were then filled and are not visible.

The position on the left was too high, so I lowered it to the position seen on the right. Then the final embellishments were added and the Halo was painted and left to dry.

The Paint Restoration

Before I had sanded the statue, I matched-up the paint colours using colour charts. I wanted to re-create the colours as best I could as I liked them so much. The first thing to do was to mix the paints. I used Artist's Acrylic paints, starting off with a couple of colours and adding until I achieved the hue

necessary. This took a little time as the paint dries considerably darker. After each addition, I painted  little sample on paper and left it to dry. Once I had matched up the colours, I re-produced the mix in a bigger batch for painting the large areas on the statue.

I am not going to bore you with the minutiae of each stage of the painting process. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I will let the pictures speak for themselves. All I will say is that I changed elements I didn't like and made the whole project completely my own, whilst keeping to the Victorian spirit of the original. Painting is not really my thing. There are much better painters of detail out there. I did my very best and imbued the statue with something of me. I did it with love and patience and am very happy with the result. My beloved husband loves it and that is all I could ask for. I did it for him. I hope you enjoy it too. Here follow pictures taken along the way, ending with the final work of art. The Sacred Heart now stands in pride of place in our hallway.

Sacred Heart In-Situ