One of the strange features of Clacheranmor is the window inside the house in the porch area. Because of changes that have been made to the house over the years, the porch area was incorporated into the house itself, leaving both the window, the electric meter cupboard, and even a door bell, inside the house. The previous owners had beautifully rendered over the pebble dash (the original outdoor wall covering) but all that covered the window was a plain painted board.
We were undecided as to what to do with the window, but ultimately decided that it was easier to make a feature of it than to try and cover it up and match the render around it, which would have been impossible! The other side of the window is in the spare loo and has had a mirror placed into the reveal, and it's a good little feature.
We thought for a while about what we could put into the hole and the first idea was a stianed glass window, as the reveal was deep enough to also put a light fitting into it so that the glass woudl be illuminated from behind and look amazing. Amber designed a beautiful Japanese themed window to fit with our idea for decor and I got it priced up by a lady who we work with at Fox Windows. It came in at £2.5k and, despite me saying I wanted it to be as close to Amber's design as possible, she had made some sweeping changes so I felt it wouldn't really be what I wanted (despite her exceptional skill).
Not long after that I spotted my great friend Parveen's brother, Ali, on Instagram and gave him a follow. He regularly posted photos of his art work and I thought they were lovely. He got in touch to say that if we ever felt he could create something for our new house that he would be delighted. We decided to take a punt on it and we had a chat on the phone.
I've known Ali since he was 3 years old, and he has grown into a truly lovely man, and it was so nice to catch up after so long. The upshot was that we gave him the exact dimensions of the hole and the brief of 'Japanese themed' and said he had free reign.
A few weeks later we were invited to Ali's flat in London to collect our bespoke, original painting. We were excited and curious to see where he had gone with his creativity.
Ali enjoyed the anticipation of the reveal, and made us a drink, introduced us to his flat mates and entertained us, all the while with the painting awaiting us on his balcony.
Eventually we were lead out into the summer evening, with stunning views across central London, for the big flourished pull of the sheet hiding our work of art. And we couldn't have been more pleased! The colours popped in the late sunshine, and the beautiful weeping cherry blossoms hit the brief full on. Ali even named it 'Bleeding Blossoms' with it's own bio: captures the essence of Japanese blossoms while infusing it with an abstract and emotive interpretation. The artwork explores the concept of transience and the fleeting nature of beauty. The bleeding effect symbolizes the passing of time and the inevitable. This was heavily inspired by Japanese blossom trees weathered, or even crushed.
After a lovely couple of hours we said warm goodbyes to Ali and headed home with our art work, ready to be installed in our new house as a talking point just inside the main entrance.
We put the frame in an overframe for protection back to Warwickshire and onward a further 400 miles to Scotland. The picture made it fine but of course, trying to put a new frame into a window frame with over plaster and various 'out of trues' took John ages. We wanted a clean look. Initiatially, we didn't put a frame in place, but when John came to the house in September with Amber, he fitted the finessed Japlaq outer frame which shows it off really well - we hope you agree.
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