Montrose
Seafront Railings

In this page I want to show how a project progresses from the sketch ideas through to the completion of the work on site. The designs for this commission illustrates well the way my initial thoughts change along the way.

Started in early 1997 I was chosen after a limited design competition to work with the Great British Bollard Company to produce a set of railings for Montrose seafront.

My first ideas were for a customised main stanchion with the horizontals bent into 'wave' forms that would produce a series of decorative panels.

one of the first ideas
note ring on top of post

This ring began to develop

first appearance of 'sculptural' top

and changed from rough idea

to become

the finished post on site

Concept

The client in the original brief stated their desire for the artist to work closely with The Great British Bollard Company who for the last few years have been developing and manufacturing bollards and other items of street furniture using polymer resins. Five years ago having been a traditional company (North Eastern Rubber Co.) providing components for the shipping industry and the North Sea they landed a contract to provide bollards for Disneyland Paris. This has taken them down a new avenue and they now solely concentrate on the street furniture side of their business.

'Ferrocast' the name they have applied to their product is extremely hardwearing and requires very little maintenance,(the company reps display this well by arriving to show you a bollard and then proceed to attack it with a hammer!!). The polymer itself has no structural strength, but is applied by a cast process around an internal steel core.

This characteristic of the material lended itself perfectly to my ideas for sculpted tops to the posts.
I then developed this idea to include 5no. variations of the post each one illustrating a different element associated with the seaside.

water & seaweed(vegetable)

crystal

cloud & shell

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