In December 2018 multi award-winning garden designer, John Everiss, gathered volunteers together in Bromsgrove to don the uniforms of D-Day soldiers and adopt various static positions ready to be 3D-scanned by professional scanners at Central Scanning Ltd.
These scans will inform the fragile metallic sculptures which John will create to represent soldiers landing on the beaches of Normandy in the D-Day 75 Garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in May 2019.
Each sculpture will be constructed from individually welded washers giving them an intricate and translucent quality. The sculptures will be incomplete; dissipating into thin air like a memory.
In contrast the central figure of the garden will be a solid life-sized sculpture of Bill Pendell MM, carved by hand from a 5 ton piece of millstone grit by renowned British sculptor, Thompson Dagnall.
Bill’s daughter, Fay Pendell, kindly traveled to Bromsgrove with Bill’s blazer, beret and medals so that young volunteer Lewis Copeland could be scanned in Bill’s place; sitting, looking back 75 years and recalling the events of 6th June 1944. This was the last time Bill’s “veteran uniform” was worn before it went with him to the grave. We’d like to thank Fay very much for helping us to do this. Having the support of Bill’s family in this project is of paramount importance.
The 3D scans have since been passed on to Stage One Creative Services Ltd, who have produced highly detailed plaster moulds. Thompson and John will begin work on the sculptures this week and we can’t wait to see the finished result!
