In the later part of 2008, I was contacted by a couple wanted to engage an artisan blacksmith to create a set of railings for their custom built home on Manitoulin Island. They had originally met me at Summerfolk in Owen Sound. I had been mounting more of a gallery presentation than a real sales booth there for a good number of years. They had liked what they had seen and kept me in the back of their minds as their house construction progressed. One of their objectives was to work with local (or regional in my case) artisans for as many elements of the overall project as possible. The fitting of personalities and approaches to work was also quite important to them. In a departure I found quite wonderful, they were not in any rush to have work completed. 'Do it once - and do it right' and 'Good work takes time' were concepts they held themselves, and expected from those they employed. They also had taken time to fully review not only my portfolio , but also to read over the sections 'On Custom Designs' and 'Gallery of Details'. They had a general concept of might be possible, and realistic budget expectations (something I greatly appreciate!) . A few general images of the house interiors were sent via e-mail, and some initial design concepts were discussed.

Note that the images below all show the 'temporary' rough pine stairs and railings that were put in place when the owners moved into the house.

Key to what ever designs that were chosen for the project would be the ability to transmit light and not block the viewing lines. The house has much higher than normal ceilings (ten feet) and expansive use of glass. The house is set on the side of a lake , and is fully ringed by trees in a hardwood forest. As the building is set into the side of a hill, the view south off the main floor is actually at tree top level out over the water. The plan is open concept, with the main floor having a central fire place dominating the combination living, dining and kitchen spaces. The placement of the stairs is to one side of a two story bank of windows.

Given the raw distance from Wareham to the site of the home on Manitoulin Island, an extended visit was scheduled to let me meet the clients, view the spaces and take my initial measurements. I was able to come prepared with some general design concepts. Over the course of an afternoon and evening, we did undertake the usual looking though my reference books on historical and contemporary architectural metalworks. There was a lot of fast scribbling, trying to get various proposed ideas from both sides down on paper.

The project would entail a large number of smaller individual sections of railing, which fitted together to encompass the whole. There was a landing between each of the basement to main, and main to 2nd story, levels. All together there were a total of at least 21 individual sections, flat and diagonal rectangles, triangles, end posts, and long hand rail pieces. This complexity actually would prove a blessing. In the end the very longest panel was only eight feet long, so it meant none of the segments were impossibly heavy. It also meant that the transport via ferry to Manitoulin would not prove a major problem. (An extra bonus was that even though there were a lot of individual panels, so many joints meant there was considerable 'fiddle factor' which eased potential installation problems.)

It was during this overnight session with the clients that I came up with the overall concept that would inspire the design of the individual elements : 'Sea to Shore to Sky'.
This concept would allow there to be a series of changing elements as you walked up from the basement. Each would draw from the natural world, with each upright element unique inside the larger patterns. Thus working to my best strengths as an artisan - individual pieces rather than exact duplications.) There would be use of muted colours - rather than a more traditional flat black finish.

Because of the scope and size of this project, the initial deposit was considerable. Both because the customers were truly interested, and to provide them with some measure of 'how I was spending their money' I made extensive documentation of the work in progress via blog postings. I also filmed a couple of video segments of how some of the individual elements were physically created. Rather than repeat all that documentation here, I refer those interested to the individual segments :

A couple of notes on the overall production:

Use of Colour : As was mentioned, it was decided to use darkened down solid colours for the various panels. It was felt the repeated use of black would both make the individual segments visually too heavy, and also the entire project less interesting. To that end, a deep green was used for both the Kelp and again for the Rushes sections. A very dark blue was used for the Breakers and Undertow panels, then repeated on the frames of the 'Sky' set. The two heavy support beams in the basement to main floor are a deep brown. For the show piece 'Forest Floor' more realistic colours were applied to the flowers and leaves within the panel, plus use of highlight colours over the dark green base.

Kelp End Post : This element was considerably more complex in the end than was originally planned. It turned out the problem of 'you can draw it - but can you make it' reared its ugly head. In the end it was just not possible to forge the individual leave components into the tight curves required for the spiral basket shape of the concept drawing. This was solved by forging a second set of kelp frond elements out of smaller angle, and creating a basket within a basket. The end result is actually even better than the concept. The extra elements produce a second level of complex detail within the larger form.

Forest Floor : The lower portion of this panel needed to be removable, to provide occasional access to the space below the stairs and landing. The solution was a separate panel, composed of the fern elements within a curved frame (forged from flat bar). This hooks on to tendril elements extending from the railing. From the start, it was intended to incorporate natural plan forms from the surrounding landscape. A number of test pieces were produced before the final selection was made, and these where worked into the actual layout. This process was more organic than pre-planned. Individual upright elements were 'forged to fit' within the larger framework. One departure from the standard was the use of a twisted bundle of smaller tubes for the hand rail, in place of the 1 1/2 diameter used elsewhere in the series. An important aspect of this panel was that it would be in direct view from the front door - and so needed to make a visual statement to the visitor to the house.

Final Installation
The installation on this project was broken into a number of individual phases:
July 2009 - 'Rushes' panels (main floor)
October 2009 - 'Undersea' panels (basement stairs)
July 2010 - 'Trees' and 'Sky' panels (1st to 2nd floors)
October 2010 - 'Forest Floor' panel (main entry)

Note, the quality of some of these images is not ideal!