Cedra

Description:

I was asked if I could do something to replace a grand old cedar tree that had finally succumbed to the ravages of old age and fallen in a storm. The site is at Woolbeding House, near Midhurst in Sussex, and on my first introductory visit, as I turned off the main Midhurst road and wound my way through a narrow high banked lane, I began to have a feeling that I had been here before, and as I drove past an elegant sandstone arch, the sense of familiarity increased. 

It was after lunch when I enquired about the previous owners of Woolbeding House that I learned it had been the Lascelles family who had been there. Suddenly it came back to me as clear as day that there was no doubt that I had been here before. I have a clear recollection of visiting this house with my mother when I must have been 10 years old. And so I was commisioned to put a piece exactly where I had been over 60 years ago.

Cedra is in my 2011 Coanda series. These pieces take their name from Henri Coanda, who has been called 'the father of fluid dynamics'; he was particularly intrigued by the way fluids cling to surfaces. This came to be called the Coanda effect - here demonstrated on an overhanging surface where the water is allowed to spill over the edge of a bowl and adhere to its underside, converging towards the central trunk.

The piece is fabricated from cast, spun and rolled mirror-polished stainless steel, four metres in diameter. Woolbeding house is owned by the National Trust and the garden opened to the public in April 2011.