Our most recent Conservation of Architectural Ironwork training event took place at the SPAB head office in Spitalfields, London, from 11-12th April, attended by practitioners and professionals, alongside SPAB Scholars. NHIG Council members Bethan Griffiths, Chris Topp and Geoff Wallis delivered lectures on historical context, manufacture and forming of iron, properties, tools, and repair techniques. Other sessions covered specifications, contracts, surface preparation and coatings, several video clips and a two-hour walking tour of local ironwork.
All the attendees were complimentary about the course, and many rated the event as ‘excellent’. We plan to run this highly regarded 2-day course again next year, this time in York.
An interesting idea
During the course, Geoff pointed out that much our best-loved decorative ironwork is a mixture of order and disorder, symmetry and chaos. He posed the interesting theory that our love of decorative wrought ironwork may be more than an aesthetic preference for traditional materials and craftsmanship, and might in fact be instinctive. He analysed a simple example (pictured):
Our reaction to well-designed historic metalwork may therefore be wired into our brains. What do you think?