Geoffrey Clarke RA

Geoffrey was the sculptor who designed the Crown of Thorns on the tower of St. Michael's Church, Linlithgow that we visited on our holiday to Scotland (see here).

It turns out that he spent a lot of his life in Suffolk, living just outside the village of Hartest which has been the focal point of a  number of lovely walks we have done over the past few years and Joyce's father-in-law knew him.

As his biography on Artnet says...

"Geoffrey Clarke (British, 1924–2014) was a prominent sculptor known for his experimentation with materials and processes. A graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, Clarke was one of the few artists in Britain who actively encouraged and adopted the practice of cooperation between sculptors and architects. He was also one of the first in this country to use the welding method in sculpture, and he invariably opted for the use of aluminum rather than bronze, a metal that was still innovative in the 1950s. Clarke’s work during that decade was characteristically monumental and large in scale.

During this period, he completed 50 architectural commissions for a number of modernist buildings, the most well known of which was his work on the new Coventry Cathedral, which began in 1956. Clarke went on to create the cross, candlesticks, crown of thorns, and three stained glass windows in the nave of the cathedral." 

He built a small studio foundry in a barn beside the house, Stowe Hill, (which is on the road between Hartest and Brockley), that he and his future wife, Ethelwynne Tyrer, known as Bill, had chanced on while driving through Suffolk in 1954. 

As described here...

"A new woodland development planted in December 1999, Hartest Wood has been planted with 187 oak trees representing 1 for every household. In the centre there is a sculpture called the Gift which was designed by a local called Geoffrey Clarke. It sits very well at this site and is a lovely walk to do if you visit Hartest."

Geoffrey died in 2014 aged 89. You can read his obituary in The Guardian here.