A faun's garden bench for Twickel Castle

As I already explained in reported earlier I am currently restoring a garden bench for Twickel Castle with new sandstone components. First, I carved the legs, and now the other parts are being made. It's a somewhat strange bench,

To the first post about this project.

with a relief in lead on the backrest and limestone satyrs on the legs. I estimate the relief to be from around the middle of the twentieth century, maybe even later, and the legs are probably much older.

I never quite understood what this composite bench was all about, until I received the picture below via e-mail this week. Now it turns out that this bank was composed purposefully around the theme of the faun or satyr. The older pieces at the bottom were perhaps already in possession, and with the music-making small faunts in lead and the relief with dancing nymphs and fauns, it all becomes one theme, even though the parts appear to stem from different eras. Unfortunately, the nice statuettes were stolen in the 1980s and since then the two sandstone spheres were just placed there.

I'm currently working on the backrest of the bench. The lead relief is taken care of by the metal restorator, and from a new piece of sandstone I'm carving the basis for that. In the old situation this part was made of concrete, but as said a thick branch of an oak tree has done some irreparable damage to that as well. Fortunately not too badly to the relief itself; that was just bent out of shape and had a tear.

The big challenge now is to ensure the sandstone follows the odd shapes on the back of the relief. That will of course never succeed completely, so the last bit will be filled with a restoration casting mortar.

Read more…