Finn Floor Master

While Finn is off in Rome (delivering our excess baggage - a very large very heavy suitcase's worth - to C&C to lug home for us - my fingers are crossed for successful strategic repacking...) I'm going to get his fabulous floors post started for him. Just a little nudge to get them out there for you all to see.

Here will be a glimpse into what he has been up to these very nearly six months, but you must understand that they are still works in progress. They also make up much of the weight he has carried to Rome, so they will be added to the list of tasks to complete when we get home.

Anyway, here goes, I'll see if I can do the task justice.

The type of place it all begins.
A fancy palazzo on the Grand Canal.
This is a landing in the Ca'Pezzaro stairwell. 

This is a photo from a more recent museum visit so as yet there are drawings but no works in wood to show for it. But it's a nice pic of Finn, that handsome man, contemplating the pattern.

One of the first designs he drew was in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana during our late night at the museum excursion way back in June.

Here's an image off the web of said floor.
We will likely return to that museum before we leave though so I'll see if I can maybe get a clearer picture then.

And here's the Master at work on his version.
The dining table in our apartment was quickly relocated to the canal-gazing corner and re-appropriated as a workspace.
To replace the loss in the dining area we got the yellow FOS hand-me-down.

And here it is, finished to the point of being travel-ready.
(This one's being sent home in 2 parts.)
I'd say he way out does the original with this masterpiece.

So that should give you some idea of what's going on, but to spell it out...
I'll start back a bit, back to 2005 when we travelled to Europe, and particularly the three weeks we spent with Hana and Christian in the Netherlands. H&C were living in Leiden, a university town located approximately halfway between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and fairly close to Den Haag. Well there are endless great art galleries and museums to visit in the Netherlands, especially in Rotterdam, amazing. But it was a gallery in Den Haag that got us into trouble. It was huge, like many are, but it also had really great parquet floors, with different patterns in almost every room. I've got no idea what the place was called any more, but it took us days and days to get through. Eventually it led to teasing. Christian gave us a lot of stick about our apparent infatuation with a city that was obviously not cool enough to warrant so many visits. But this place - every room we entered with a new floor pattern would have Finn, drawing book out, sitting on the seats provided for lingering contemplation of the artworks, sketching the floor. Other gallery visitors would file in, see Finn staring intently at the floor, and watch him in amazed fascination. No one was looking at the art.

So that's how we go. Slow. It is a really nice way to travel, stopping long enough and looking intently enough to see and appreciate your surroundings. Very very different from the majority of the Biennale visitors, snap snap snapping away on their cameras, checking the display screen to make sure the shot turned out, but barely ever looking at whatever it was they just photographed. Venice as a whole feels a lot like that too of course, a city generally experienced though a lens.

An example from the Gallerie dell'Accademia a few mornings ago.

To keep himself busy here in Venice, Finn decided to make more of a project out of these drawings. Something achievable at the kitchen table without a tool kit. The drawings he does of the marble floors in the churches, museums, and palazzo here are done carefully. They are measured by eye, or sometimes hand-span, and colour coded to show where the contrasts lie. Ebay keeps him stocked with wood veneers, the art supplies store a few zigzags away has 3mm plywood for the backing, and the hardware store the rest - pva glue, masking tape, scalpel blades. The idea is that the marquetry masterpieces he produces here will be taken home to eventually be made into box lids and table tops when we're back in Wellington with a full toolkit and workshop.



The Basilica di San Salvatore al Monte on the hill above Florence provided a fountain of designs, but it was the zodiac tombs that won the day in wood.

The masking tape was (mostly) peeled off this one just moments before  it was packed away for Wellington.

Creepy ghoulish figures, skeletons, and scenes of hell have also been contemplated. And one or two realised.

A tomb in the church housing the Ukraine pavilion. 

Detail.

And here are some of the more geometric specimens.

Conversations with Svetislava (she studied industrial design here in Venice) about half-circle three-legged tables turned up a curious design idea or two.

The scallop motif is a regularly occurring design.

(Nice peas with this one too.)

This one is a copy from the Cappelle Medicee in Florence.

And how about it sitting atop a trio of these beauties?
Finn really does have his work cut out for him when we get home.

Well Finn came back from Rome safe and sound and with almost everything successfully lumped home by C&C (bless them), and he helped with a bit of photo selection, but otherwise left me to finish the post. So here it is. 

Please send all queries and orders directly to Finn.

12 November 2011