Final shoot...

The photographers came in on Wednesday and talked us through how to capture a photo or film by using the correct lighting. They showed us how to use all of the equipment and all the different sort of effects we could achieve through using different light, aperature settings, animating light and filters. We were left to test the shots ourselves and decide what we thought was best in capturing certain elements of the room.

In the study we used a small light coming through the window and another small light from above with gauze filters, a larger light with a black gel on it was shone through the doorway. The lights bounced off the desk and the edge of the chaise lounge and onto the back wall where the screen was made visible. This gave it a really eerie look, exactly the look we wanted to achieve.

The drawing room was light by a light coming through each window with pink and orange gels on them to create a sunset mood. A light with gauze was positioned on the ceiling as was another one by the door, this was to act like a chandelier. The overall mood of the room with shadows cast gave a dreamy, calm, warm feeling, a great contrast to the cold, dark, uncomfortable feeling from the study.

Finishing touches!

Rhyan brought in her rugs for the study and the drawing the room and Fiona bought an array of fake flowers and ornaments. The windows were covered with black fabric to prevent the light from outside the real windows coming through, some of these were also boarded with cardboard. Simon and Andy went around the set and covered up any areas where light might interfere with our shote by covering it with large sheets of cardboard. The study had a black fabric ceiling placed over it using a staple gun to provide the room with the darkness it required. It made the really dark which I think may make it better for shots where light is required to bounce of objects.

Paneling...

The panels were painted first with a red/brown coat, then with a darker brown and while that is drying a corse brush with black paint on was run over the top to give a wood effect. Dados were painted gold for going along door frames and dark brown for above the paneling.

Aspects of the room have fallen into place with the completion of:

The wallpaper by Rhyan, Jenny and Vicky

The fireplace by Fiona and Callum

The love seat by Rhyan, Jenny and Vicky

The screen by Rob and Sarah

The doors by Fiona and Callum

The Chaise longue buy Nicole and Sarah

The whatnot bought by Rhyan

The windows by Jenny and Vicky

And the floor is beginning to be wood stained here as shown here by Callum and Sarah.

Once the floor was finished being varnished it was taped down in certain areas to hold it together.

When all the furniture was completed it was arranged in the room just as we planned in the meetings at the beginning of the project...

Let there be light!

Oil Lamps:

Rob and me were assigned the lighting to be one of our focal points. While I was making the comfy chair Rob made a start on the oil lamps we were going to have for in the drawing room.

Through his research he found that Kerosine lamps were really contemporary of the time, being used in the USA and Europe in 1850 and since Ivan was a very conscious social climber, he would have kept his house pretty up to date in terms of the interior decor.

When the chair was completed I joined Rob in creating an oil lamp. He had made a really good start by using a couple of plastic drinks bottles to create the ‘glass’ lamp, some Styrofoam, cardboard and mdf.

He has taken two ends from a bottle and glued a Styrofoam oval between them. The bottom bottle has the lid glued in place and painted with gold with pin pricks along it as his autocad design suggested. He has included a gold crown like trimming as decor, covering away the joins. The next bottle above that is glue nose down to the Styrofoam, a notch is removed from the top of the foam to make room for a candle wick. The body of the bottle fits into the top part with the neck and bottom cut off, the opening at the top would be where the heat can escape.

Already the lamp was looking authentic. We cut off the end of a nail and painted it gold and fitted it to the side of the lamp as the key in which one would turn to switch the lamp on. Rob was considering putting a mirrored back on the mdf but decided against it due to the lack of time we had left.

After a discussion we found that there was something not right about it and decided that the gold ‘crown-like’ band made the lamp look juvenile and not as classy as it could be. I suggested cutting them down to create a single band of gold around the base, we tried this and decided it gave the lamp authenticity so we glued it down. At times the glue was problematic as we weren’t able to use super glue or a glue gun because it would melt the Styrofoam so we had to use pva instead which took a while to dry, we found ourselves a lot of the time holding the lamp together or taping it up with masking tape.

We needed to create a form of light in the lamp, something that wouldn’t be dangerous but would provide us with the right sort of light that would show realism. We had the idea of using LED bulbs but then had the problem of where to put the battery pack on the light. Rob though of the idea of using fake candles that has an LED bulb within it. So Rob went down to the 99p store and bought two fake candles.

Carefully, the bottom of the lamp was removed and the Styrofoam was carved away to create a hole wide and deep enough to fit the battery and switch inside it, the fake wick and wires were hidden in the neck of one of the bottles were the top met them Styrofoam base. We painted over the battery case with gold paint to blend it in with the rest of the lamp, making sure we didn’t paint over the switch. Rob thought a way to reach the switch would be to take off the whole of the bottom of the lamp. My idea was to take the bottle lid off the bottom, which Rob had glued, and the hole would be wide enough for us to stick our fingers through to press the switch. My idea was as success so we set to work in making that achievable.

Once the candles were in all that was left was to drill them into the wall. We positioned them either side of the mirror in the drawing room, we thought this was best as it made the room look symmetrical and it added grandeur to the wall.

Hand Lights:

The lighting in the study was to be kept at a minimal so death could be portrayed as dark and sinister as it could be and the decision to have candle light in the room was made as a group. Rob and me decided that since the wall was to be holding out candles why not make hands holding the candles from the wall. We thought this was relative to the constant symbolism used throughout Baroque interior design and it related to the book where Ivan describes hands grabbing him. They also link to the feet on the comfy chair as they are claws and appear to be somewhat sinister hands.

We queried the best way to achieve this and found ourselves consulting Simon. He suggested live casting a hand. Since I was doing the lighting my hands were quick to be elected.

He created a cylinder casing to go around my hand for my hand to be cast in, making sure it was a bit bigger than my hand to my hand would never be at risk of touching the sides.

We went down into the ceramics room where Simon helped us through the casting process. We used a substance called Alginate to cast my hand, this was mixed 1 part Alginate powder and 1 part water which he mixed for a few seconds in a pot. Once the Alginate was mixed Simon had to pour it in the tube and I had to quickly put my hand in there, careful not to touch the sides. I had to hold my hand in a cupped sort of position so the candle would sit in my palm. The Alginate took about 5 minutes to set and when it had set it had gone a hard rubbery texture. Because of this new texture I was able to wriggle my hand out of the tube without ruining the mould.

Once the mould was made we mixed up a bowl of plaster to pour into the mould. We started with a bowl of water and sprinkled plaster powder into the water and gradually the level of powder reached just under the level of the water, this was when we knew we had enough plaster. It was then stirred thoroughly and poured into the mould. We poured in a bit then swilled it around in the mould to make sure any cracks were filled. When the plaster reached the top of the mould we gently banged the mould on the worktop to make any trapped air bubbles rise to the surface.

Once the plaster was set (after about an hour) the cylinder was cut away from the mould and a long incision was made through one side of the mould from top to bottom. This allowed us to open the mould and carefully take the hand out. This process was then taped back up with the cylinder placed back on and repeated for the other hand.

Once both hands were out we decided to paint them gold to continue with the decadent Baroque theme and also symbolising Ivan’s wealth, money in his hands.

Once this dried we dusted the surface over with graphite powder to give them a dirty, sooty look.

We wanted the overall look to seem as though they were well used so to achieve this we decided to melt candle wax all over the hands, creating long drips of hardened wax, the candles were also quite small to represent the wear of them.

Once the wax was all melted were able to drill them into the wall. Rob drilled a hole through the wrist of each and put raw plugs in to stiffen the joint. Unfortunately, when we did drill them into the wall the raw plugs opened up and cracked the plaster on the hands. We were able to repair them though using superglue and polyfiller which we painted over so they were able to stay on the wall. Taking them down however may be an issue!

Additional Lighting:

One of the members of the group had brought in brass candelabra with two plastic candles on the ends. Rob and I thought we could remodel them to fit in the walls. First of all we took the plastic candles away as they looked tacky and unrealistic and took away the metal mechanism that held them and the wiring.

We were then left with plastic notches on the top with a bolt. We painted these gold and tried to match the colour to the rest of the candles. Seeing as they didn’t match up completely we decided to do what we did best – melt wax all over them. We each took a candle and melted wax all over the tops of the candelabra where the candles would be held and while the wax was still hot we were able to position the candles on there nicely.

This was drilled to the wall in the study to the left of the window. This was above his desk and we decided he would have needed a light up there for at night or when his curtains were drawn.

The Comfy Chair Continued...

Both me and Steph went and looked in numerous charity shops for a suitable chair and couldn’t find anything relevant, Steph also looked at a car boot sale but came back empty handed.

One morning I took a trip to the indoor market on Rochester high street and a spotted numerous chairs, many of them unusable. Here are my findings:

I returned to the university with my findings and we had to make a decision, as time was against us, to buy one of the chairs. We chose the chair that appeared to be the most malleable in terms of recreating it.

We purchased it from the indoor market for £8, a reasonable price for what it was, though it had a broken seat and haggling seemed to be out of the question.

To start with we looked at what we had to work with and compared it to our research. The chairs on our purchased chair were too straight so shaping them on the sanders seemed to be the best option. We took the chair apart and began sanding the base of the frame, we sanded an even curve along the edge and rounded it off at the surface.

Looking at the research we found that the front legs tended to be heavily shaped whereas the back legs remained slightly bowed but plain. So we tried to remove the legs from the rest of the chair, since the wood was so old and the legs were pegged, pinned and glued to the rest of the frame we were unable to take it apart without potentially destroying the wood and had to take the half frame that stayed attached with us to be sanded. Then we attempted to sand it into some sort of shape but we found that the attached frame made it too difficult to manoeuvre around the sanders and hand sanding would take too long. Other possible ways for us to create shaping in the leg was to paper mache some sort of motif into them, as suggested by Lauren. We eventually decided that carve a pattern into the surface to give it that decadent appeal instead.

Steph did some research into Baroque patterns so we could create a stencil that we would use for our carvings.

http://www.123rf.com/photo_4121905_set-of-vector-baroque-patterns-for- design.html

http://www.123rf.com/photo_4121905_set-of-vector-baroque-patterns-for- design.html

http://sweetdekor.food.officelive.com/EdibleDesignerprints.aspx

http://sweetdekor.food.officelive.com/EdibleDesignerprints.aspx

http://sweetdekor.food.officelive.com/EdibleDesignerprints.aspx

While she was busy doing that I took the top piece off the chair and looked into creating an elegant shape with the sander but I found the same problem with the legs, it was too hard to manoeuvre around the sander. So instead I sanded a basic shape that matched the shape we had sanded in the previous piece of the chair.

Nicole told Steph that her patterns she had found were too small to go on the chair, Steph’s idea was to repeat the pattern all along it numerous times but thinking back to the previous research about Baroque interiors and how the pattern is part of the structure, we decided that it was too small for the chair and any patterns we made would have to be carved in a way that would alter the structure of the chair rather than just the surface.

Things were not looking up for the chair....

After much deliberation we decided to take another trip to the indoor market and see what we could find. I managed to squeeze my way through some shelving and discovered a perfect set of old, embellished dining chairs. They were complete with carvings and motifs and seemed perfect for what we wanted. This we managed to purchase for £12, again, haggling was out of the question.

When we finally managed to drag the chair up the hill to the university we looked at what needed to be done to improve the chair. First of all was it needed a good clean! The upholstery needed to be changed and stuffing needed to be increased and perhaps some of the fine details could have been picked out in gold. We were very optimistic about this chair.

We began by taking the seating out and removing the upholstery from the base frame. This was unpleasant as the stuffing used inside was very old and was falling apart. Once that was done we asked Simon how he would suggest creating the seating.

The heavily embellished back of the chair was problematic at first as the chair was supposed to be a comfy chair so we considered knocking out the centre piece and filling it with an mdf board, upholstered and braided. The group’s feedback made it clear that they liked the middle piece too much to remove it and suggested only upholstering the gaps either side of it. This would be too difficult so we decided against upholstery on the back and leave it as it is.

From our research the look of the cushion coming down over the wooden framing of the chair with embroidery over the edge really appealed to us and we wondered how we would have achieved that look. The sharp edges achieved at the corners of the cushioning seemed appealing also. Simon told us that since we were using a dining chair as our basis it wouldn’t have had that feature on the cushioning which would have made it irrelevant to Baroque furnishing. We were given the alternate that we could make the cushion much higher and fasten the corners of the upholstery so that they appeared sharper.

Heather joined us here when we decided what the next steps were to be.

First of all I drew out on to a piece of mdf the outside of the base of the chair, this would make the new base overlap the chair frame making the cushioned area expand to the whole surface rather than sitting in the middle with the chair frame around it.

Polystyrene at least 1 inch in thickness was then cut to the same shape and layered on top of the mdf. This was repeated with thick foam and then a thinner piece. We found this to be too thick so we removed the polystyrene and decided the remaining thickness was ample, bearing in mind it would be slightly less thick once the fabric was pulled tight over it.

Nicole gave us some spare fabric se had found that was patterned and went well within the colour scheme of our room.

So we began by stapling the fabric at the back of the chair base using a staple gun. Heather showed us how to perform a hospital fold in achieving a neatly folded corner for our chair. We found the upholstering process to be both fun and tedious as you tighten one areas of the chair and another area has become creased or uneven. I was very insistent that the top surface of the chair remained smooth. One problem that arose was a bulge in the foam so bits were removed and then re-added and moved over until we finally got a neat, smooth finish that we were all very proud of.

Another problem we then had was drilling the new base into the old base so it fit on top of the chair as the wood was very old. Drilling and nailing didn’t seem to get us very far but eventually it was accomplished.

I went into Chatham the next day as Steph and Heather were not present for the completion of the chair and bought gold embroidery ribbon which went well with the fabric and glue gunned this to the bottom of the cushion to finish it off and hide any unwanted folds of creases. The group decided that the chair didn’t need to be painted or varnished as it was already a suitable colour. I washed the chair over in methylated spirits, removing any remaining dirt so the chair’s glossiness was revealed. I then picked out the gold embellishments on the head of the chair and down the sides and the balls on the feet. We were debating making arms for the chair using the scraps from the previous chair but decided that the overall finish was fine without them.

The overall look of the chair was very pleasing and I was extremely proud of the finished item.