News

Detail of white plaster relief sculpture with flower and leaf design

Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler – The Art of Plaster

Opening during London Craft Week, this exhibition will be set amidst the beautiful fabrics, antique furniture and fine paintings in legendary interior decorators Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler’s London showroom.

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Shop window with display of decorative plaster sculptures

Bloomsbury Design Exhibition

Geoffrey’s flower sculptures are on display in a window exhibition at Bloomsbury Design, Judd Street, London (a stone’s throw from King’s Cross station).

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Geoffrey-Preston-pegasus

Annabel’s Unicorn

Sometimes, an inanimate object really seems to come to life. We all fell in love with this one (in want of imagination we nicknamed him Neddy). He was created for Annabel’s nightclub in Mayfair, where he hangs in the stairwell suspended from a Jules Verne-inspired hot air balloon.

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Georgian Group Exhibition

Splendour! Art in Living Craftsmanship will be showing at The Georgian Group in London this winter. Work by many talented artists and craftspeople is on show – everything from silk wallpaper to scagliola – and also a fine selection of architectural drawings.

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Stucco flowers

Country Life Exhibition Review

Jeremy Musson reviews Lines of Beauty in Country Life:  “This exhibition explores the frozen music of the stuccowork that graced the historic English interior and gives a flickering vision of the most inspiring plaster decoration of modern times”

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Exhibition in London

Lines of Beauty – Rococo plasterwork and the art of Geoffrey Preston will be showing at The Foundling Museum in London this summer. The Foundling Museum is well worth a visit – not least for its spectacular rococo Court Room.

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Exhibition News

A Symphony of Curves will be showing at The Harley Gallery in November and December. An opportunity to see Geoffrey’s work at close quarters, the exhibition will include sculpture and decorative plasterwork, from small stucco flower reliefs to a wildly exuberant Rococo ceiling (and a veritable menagerie of birds).

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We’re on the move…

After 12 happy years at Eagle Yard we are moving. Our beautiful new workshop is less than three miles outside Exeter, surrounded by the rolling green hills of the Perridge estate. We’ll have more space, more light, a drawing office and plenty of room to create the sculpture and decorative plasterwork for which we’re known.

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New work – River Scene with Heron

In January Geoffrey installed a new commission at Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum. The new piece is a low relief sculpture in stucco and depicts a heron catching an eel in the river Exe, framed by an old oak tree. Exeter Cathedral and St Leonard’s Church are in the background. It was commissioned by the Museum Friends for the Making History Gallery.

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Great Fulford wins Plaisterer’s Trophy

We’re delighted to report that our new ceiling at Great Fulford has won the Humber Silver Salver in the 2013 Plaisterer’s Awards, for the best fibrous plasterwork in Britain in a heritage context.

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Great Fulford Commended In 2013 Georgian Group Awards

The Great Drawing Room has been commended in the 2013 Georgian Group Architectural Awards for the Restoration of a Georgian Interior. Great Fulford is a Grade I listed manor in Devon, the home of the Fulford family for over 800 years. The Great Drawing Room was destroyed when the ceiling collapsed in the early 19th century, and its gradual restoration has been the work of three generations of the Fulford family.

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A New Apprentice

Kate Montagne has won a scholarship from the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust, becoming the first QEST Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation Scholar, enabling her to undertake a two year apprenticeship with us. The National Association of Decorative and Fine Art Societies (NADFAS) have also provided grant funding in support of this apprenticeship.

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Exhibition News

We have two new exhibitions showing this autumn, at the Lawrence House Museum in Launceston and at Bloomsbury Design in London.

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A Symphony of Curves: Geoffrey Preston – A Tradition in Plaster

A Symphony of Curves ran from August to November 2012 at the wonderful Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery. It featured over fifty objects from small, beautifully modelled relief panels, to a complete (and wildly exuberant!) rococo ceiling.

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The oak leaves were modelled in clay and cast in lead, and the lettering on the central plaque was cut in Delabole slate.

New Work – An Oak Leaf Wreath

This wreath was made for a garden in Wiltshire. The oak leaves were modelled in clay and cast in lead, and the lettering on the central plaque was cut in Delabole slate.

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A Short History of Stucco

Hand-modelled plasterwork is now a rarity, but it has an honourable place in the history of art and architecture. The Romans learnt about stucco from the Persians. It was used for Buddhist sculpture in Afghanistan, Hindu sculpture in India, and early Renaissance sculpture in Western Europe…

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