Description
The linocut of Herstmonceux Observatory is 37 cm high by 28 cm wide (roughly A3) and signed beneath by me, the artist. Small edition of 8. The mount that comes with the artwork brings the dimensions to approx. 40 x 50cm – which is a standard size and easy to frame.
Every linocut is hand printed and individual prints vary slightly from each other, so that you will own an individual work of art. These are not mass-produced at the printers but printed by me by burnishing the back with a spoon!
Herstmonceux Observatory, near where I live in East Sussex, was once the home of the Royal Greenwich Observatory – which left London in the 1950s for the clearer skies of the countryside. It only existed here for a few decades before it became simpler to travel abroad and study the stars using international observatories in sunnier countries.
The site at Herstmonceux has become a Science Centre, open to the public. Six telescopes are still there, housed in the original copper-roofed buildings from the 1950s. This rather eccentric complex also has rectangular lily ponds between the observatories with walkways across them – as if designed as a booby trap for the unwary night-time scientist going about his business.
Next to the former observatory is Herstmonceux Castle, which has beautiful grounds and features in another of my large linocuts.
