Ntional Trust, Penrhyn Castle Behind The Scenes
We were given a brief that was to be based off of Penrhyn Castle, I was a bit confused as to what I would be doing for this project. However minutes later my tutor told me a story about a young girl that lived at the castle and fell in love with the gardener, however their love was forbidden so they were never able to be together.
This story struck a nerve with me, because of how tragic it seemed, I felt a deep sadness for this girl that I’d never met. I knew instantly that I needed to create a book and tell her story within it.
At Penrhyn Castle, I managed to find the bedroom of Alice Douglas Pennant. There was a guide on the same floor and he was able to tell me a little about Alice and this made me more excited to begin the project.
We found out that Alice had also scratched her name into the window in the Ebony Room too. The guide in that room allowed us to cross over the barrier to see the window up close, I adored this because I was un able to the name in the window in her bedroom. The guide also told us that Alice had catalogued the families entire painting collection in the Ebony Room, and that the Lord of the house gave her a diamond ring, however she wanted to prove to herself that it was a real diamond, which is why she scratched her name into the window.
It was after that, when she had fallen in love with the gardener, and her father had sent her to her bedroom to rethink the matter, that she scratched, Alice D. P. into the window, along with “essere amato amando” which when translated from Italian says, “to be loved whilst loving”.
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I intend to plan out the book next week, once we have returned to Penrhyn Castle to gather more information, and to hopefully be able to go close to the window in Alice’s bedroom to see her message etched into the glass.
I know that I want the materiality of the book to be shown right through into the final design, and I want the book to be a mixture of 3d, physical objects that are then photographed, edited digitally and then have the illustrations put on digitally using either Adobe Photoshop, or Illustrator.
I know that I want to try and incorporate some broken plaster to represent the dilapidated keep, which is where the family would have lived when there weren’t any visitors about the Castle. I also want to incorporate the wallpaper that I took images of during my last visit there, because it is what they would have had around them whilst living there, and would have been a big part of their lives, so I feel that it is only right to have that in there somehow.
I understand that I need to draft out the story which I will be working on this weekend, and I intend to have some other students as well as my tutor read through it to ensure that it is all correct and is interesting enough. I want it to be a short story, so may only be 10 pages long, however I think that that would be a nice length to tell Alice’s story without it being too long that people may lose interest with it.
I also want there to be a happy ending to the story. I understand that this will have to be fiction, but after learning that Alice never married after her forbidden love with the gardener, my heart broke because I felt a great compassion for her, being in love and not being able to be with that person. I feel that the book needs to have a happy ending because even if she wasn’t able to be with her love in reality, a book can at least give her that.
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I want to create a children’s book for the Primary School age rage. Initially I wanted to use various medias such as photography, collage, paint and ink. However after speaking to my Graphic Design tutor I have decided that I want to use photography and then within either Photoshop or Illustrator I am going to plank sections of the photographs out and add elements such as characters, and draw over these blank areas with the outline of what was there, or what I intend to be there so that it is a combination of Photography and Illustration. I think that this will be a very effective way to create the book.
An artist that I have looked at for this brief was ‘johan Thornqvist’
I find it very interesting how this artist has used photography and illustration together. I like how the illustration isn’t trying to blend into the photography, it is it’s own element and it stands alone very well.
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After our visit to Penrhyn Castle again on the 21st of October. I was able to gather more information about Alice Pennant which will be used to inform the book that I wish to create.
I was able to go back to this photograph which I was shown on our last visit, and by using a number code which linked faces to names, I found that both Alice’s mother and father were present. This helped me immensely because I intended for Alice’s father to be present in my book however had no reference of what he looked like.
I was also given the answer to a nagging question that has been at the back of my mind since our previous visit, which was, why is Alice’s surname Pennant, and yet her father is referenced as Lord Penrhyn? Apparently in the first Lord Penrhyn wrote in his will that anyone who was to inherit the estate, must inherit the name as well. This meant that although her father’s name was intact George Pennant, he was always referred to as Lord Penrhyn.
I was also able to learn more about Alice and what she did with her life as she grew older. A woman that volunteeres at Penrhyn Castle named Ann was very helpful! Alice was very involved with the war, she was involved with rehabilitating injured soldiers. She would organise tea dances and help them get back to the normality of being home.
Alice was once described as “A woman ahead of her time” because she would go out to cocktail parties wearing flapper dresses. I found this an interesting side to her. I had always assumed that because she was forbidden to be with the man she loved that her life would have been joyless, however it turns out it was the opposite. She was off partying and working in the war and seemed to have a very for filled life. Alice was also involved with setting up local schools such as the Llandegai school which allowed the mine workers children to be educated. The Llandegai village was also built by the Pennant family.
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5. Nov. 14
I’ve been working on my book pages for a couple of weeks now. I began by painting pages with the basic outline of what I wanted on each page, I then added papers to the pages. I cut out shapes and stuck them to pages using photographs that I’d taken from Penrhyn Castle as inspiration.
I wasn’t happy with the pages at that point, so I then used image maker paste and transferred images onto the pages including images of Alice, the library and an image of a man I am using as the Gardener. I also darkened the images to create more of an atmosphere within the images and I feel that the pages have more emotion because of it.
I have just added text on top of the pages, the three above are some of my favourites, however I am still going to continue experimenting with the typography and the layout of the pages to see what works best.
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FINISHED!!
Finally finished my book! it took so long, and I think the Applied Art teacher has already found a grammar mistake but I don’t care, it took so long to do and I’m pretty proud of it!
I do think that I should have restrained the typography and the text in general a bit more, however, like my tutor said, when you get it back in book form you can then begin to see things that may need to be changed again, so I may alter changes again and order another version of the book depending on my thoughts when the book actually arrives. December 1st, mark your calendars!! we shall have a feast.
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Ta Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Once my book did finally arrive, during the printing process it had cut off the bottom of the book, which really annoyed me! so I emailed Blurb with images of the problem and a sob story of how it’s for my Uni work, and fair play to them! they sent me a code so I could get another printed for free which was very lovely of them!
However, seeing my book in person, my tutor was right in saying that once you have a printed version you see all sorts of things that you want to change again, so I took this opportunity to change things and improve the book, so it was all for the greater good really.
My new book has arrived and I am very happy with it. I am happy with the overall look of the book and the style I chose to head in. I think that the cover is my favourite element of the book because of how reserved and ghostlike Alice looks, and the hand written text adds to the effect.
If I were to go back and start the book again, I would defiantly choose a book size on blurb first and then work on pages that size, rather than having the pages all ready to go and then having to jigsaw them into a book.
stacey2.0 