John Churchill Blacksmiths Est. 1988

Forged front entrance gates with bronze sphere.

Initial sketches from the designers posed various conundrums from a manufacturing point of view. Our solutions to these question of ‘How?’ are detailed to some extent in the first series of pictures and, we felt, solved the problems while enriching the design.

The gates are set up so that the bronze hemispheres are able to turn as a function of the opening and closing of the gates. The idea was that the inner face of one hemisphere would greet the incomer with a ‘Salvete’ message while the inner face of the other one would rotate to face outgoing traffic to wish ‘Valete’ (or similar message). That this was not followed through was a shame in some respects, but a grace in so far as it would almost certainly have been difficult to pull off!

Just to remind us that all things are possible we experienced some entertaining moments to do with levels and communications between contractors when we finally took the gates up to Oxfordshire to hang them…

Initial idea/concept;            janine stone

Design;                              janine stone (simon foot) jcb

Detailing                           jcb simon foot

Executed                          jcb (john churchill)