British Sundial Society Open Meeting
The British Sundial Society open meeting held today at Stockcross village near Newbury was welcoming and fun. This popular annual event attracts a full house of members and interested visitors. The individual talks covered an amazing variety of new sundial designs, discoveries and technical achievements.
In his talk, Alastair Hunter spoke about a summer of showing sundials, entitled ‘Flowers and Patination’. He described his new show stand, dressed with plants and flowers, which has created some striking effects. It has captured people’s attention at outdoor exhibitions and helps to display how sundials will look in someone’s own garden.
He also explained how patination could transform the appearance of brass. Outdoors, brass will weather down from a bright yellow to a dark chestnut brown. This looks attractive although it can take years to occur. When patination is applied at the beginning there are new possibilities, to suit individual sundials even better. Alastair showed examples of black, brown, red, gold and marbled patination on his sundials. These look stunning in a garden.