Description
This card showing Herstmonceux Observatory in East Sussex is 7″ x 5″ or 178mm high by 127mm wide portrait format and comes with a white envelope and clear cellophane sleeve. The card is blank inside for your own message.
A great card for any stargazer or science buff. It would also look good framed!
Herstmonceux Observatory was previously the home to the Royal Greenwich Observatory, which moved here in the 1950s to escape London’s light pollution. Though Herstmonceux by all accounts was a great place to work, it became redundant within a couple of decades as British astronomers increasingly used foreign telescopes in less cloudy locations. The site is now known as the Observatory Science Centre and is open to the public. Six telescopes still remain and there are often stargazing evenings.
I find it an interesting subject for a linocut as the Observatory was built in a rather odd – yet appealing – style – an odd mix of mid-Century modernism, traditional brick, flamboyant copper roofs, and the beautiful but frankly bizarre addition of rectangular lily ponds (into which astronomers apparently used to slip on dark nights!).
One of my previous large linocuts is of the nearby Herstmonceux Castle, which is also available as a greetings card.
