The mosaic starts to wag its tail

Posted by Tiggy Salt on April 30th, 2007

A sad day, but secretly quite a glad day: my mum was in London to pick up Alf who is going to be banished for his summer holidays to our home in Cheshire from now until after Chelsea. I miss him terribly already, but he will be much happier out of London and I will have much more time to get things done. It is quite wearing, to be honest, keeping up with the unrelenting demand for walks, pats, treats, sticks, balls etc from a bossy, spoilt two-year-old terrier, who will never know how much I love him.

On Tuesday I had a very good meeting with the brilliant colour specialist, Epoh Beech, of Epoh Beech Interiors, who has very kindly agreed to come on board to help us with the paint effects on the walls. She has produced some beautiful ideas of how to recreate the night sky on the rear wall and the cross hatching of the bedroom wall and to make them communicate with both the book and the garden. Next week I should have some photos for you.

Epoh has decided to paint the whole thing off site, on a roll of linen which will then be ironed onto the walls. This means much of her work can be done before the build up starts and therefore, usefully won’t be at the mercy of the elements. Any finishing touches can be done in situ, when we have placed all the plants. Also, and importantly, the glue used to hang it is reversible, so it can be safely peeled off at the end of the week and be added to the list of elements from the garden that might find a happy home at auction, with all proceeds going to our charity. I’m so pleased about this as I find the waste involved after so much time and effort utterly heartbreaking.

On Thursday, a wolf suit fitting with Billie, who has been cast in the leading role of Max. He’s a seven-year-old friend of mine who is incredibly excited about his part. More photos next week.

Friday, a trip to Suffolk for me to Stewart Landscape Solutions, our contractors, to stand around scratching our heads about the final details of the garden layout and to meet the Moon Boat.

Here are some photos of our genius mosaicist, Carola Bell, hard at work in her studio, with her hammer and hardy, cutting up strips of marble. She was going to use a combination of travertine and normal marble, but has decided against the travertine as its porous and weathers more quickly.

I can’t wait to get on site next Friday, 4 May, but am also finding all this running around incredibly exhausting and stressful. Part of me wants it all to be over, but I know that I’ll feel a huge sense of post-exhibition blues when it is!

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