One of the things I’ve always been drawn to, and have taken loads of pictures of, are ruins nestled in the overgrowth. This old church is on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Say you’re building a country estate, like the fellows at Willowbrook Park in New Zealand, and you want to add some ambience in the form of a rustic ruin. 
Ruins are becoming increasingly hard to lay your hands on, what with them being plundered by the likes of William Randolph Hearst, who used them to enhance St. Donat’s Castle in Wales, and San Simeon in California. 
What is a poor builder to do? You can’t just go to the local Home Despot and find one. 
You will need to call Redwood Stone, of course. It’s really incredible what they can do, including winning prizes at the Chelsea and Hampton Court Flower Shows in 2009. Here’s the drawing they submitted for Chelsea 2009, 
and here’s the finished product, in situ.
I am just wild about these pieces and am wishing I had the time, the space and the money to build one in my garden!
Which is your favourite?
How very interesting!
ReplyDeleteWell, that's imaginative - selling new ruins.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful! Love the little building in the 2nd pic. I'd love to see it roughed up a little more mossy.
ReplyDeleteI love the one above the drawing - it is so romantic! and the one from the flower show. these are amazing. I wish I had the space and money too!!!
ReplyDeleteI love the second pictures as well. All are beautiful.
ReplyDeleteTracy... you can rough the ruins up by painting either yoghurt or a moss mix (moss & water and blend it) onto the cement. It will grow and age the ruins. You can also do that with terra cotta pots.
ReplyDeleteAmazing pics! I have never seen this before, but love it!
ReplyDeleteWow. These are just beautiful.
ReplyDeleteCrazy for the idea of ruins but as you say, where can you put your hand on one in this day and age?
ReplyDeleteNot convinced however of the ones done by Redwood.
Too new looking. They want Martha Stewart's recipe for giving stone an aged look. Something to do with applying stale yogurt, if I recall...
Love the idea. Of course what you would really need is a complete folly with the hired hermit to live inside. Those Victorians really knew how to set a stage.
ReplyDeleteHere's Martha's recipe for aging pots with either moss or yoghurt. You would have to do this on a large scale for these buildings, but I think that the effect would really make these buildings look incredible.
ReplyDeleteYou could spray the yoghurt on, but I also think the buildings need large trees, with roots disrupting them a bit(hard to do on short notice). My favorite is number 2, which is engulfed in shrubbery, but if I was putting a new one in, I'd find the neoclassical dome easier to fit in.
ReplyDeleteNumber one gets my vote but if I had to pick a new oldy, it would be number 2. Very charming!
ReplyDeleteDo you think hundreds and thousands of years down the road we will have confused all the archeologists when they discover these building and think to themselves, "why on earth did they make new buildings that looked like they were in ruins!"
ReplyDeleteBeautiful for now though!
Toby's right about the pictured follies looking too new, but that's only because they haven't yet been artificially aged. Then again, the key to getting the aged look right is to look at a real old building and then apply the moss sludge or whatever in a way that mimics natural growth patterns: at the damp bases of walls; at horizontal joints along window sills & along deep undercuts; where accumulated water sheets down a vertical surface below a carved element or overhanging vegetation. Sometimes, in stone structures, one stone will supposrt more moss than an adjoinoing stone because ot the differences in porosity or chemical makeup of the two pieces of stone, so it pays to study the real thing. I've seen brand new installations that looked like they'd been in place for centuries, and I've seen laughably amateurish ones, whose regularly-spaced & simlarly shaped patches of moss looked as unconvining as faux marble where the would-be veining is nothing but a bunch of squiggly lines. These kind of installations aren't cheap, so it only makes sense not to slap on the goo in meaniningless dibs & daubs.
ReplyDeleteAs in any art form, the art lies not in the materials themselves--in this case yogurt & moss--but in the way they're handled. Nature is the best teacher.
Magnaverde... As always, excellent points. I was going to add a sentence about making it look real-ish, because, like you, I've seen some gawd-awful faux painting jobs.
ReplyDeleteWith these follies, the ones which look the best are the ones with plants and flowers growing along them in a 'natural' way.
Do you remember in Brideshead Revisited how they had a private chapel and Lord Marchmain had done the whole thing in full blown art nouveau? Wouldn't it be fun to have a private chapel in your yard?
ReplyDeleteOh, Willowbrooke Park, so charming!
ReplyDelete