03.03.2025
Title Font: Kim McNeil
Munich International Jewellery week
Special Viewing Friday 14th March 5.30-7pmExhibition 13-16th March
Museum Mineralogia München
St Michael’s Parish Church, Linlithgow
Private View Friday 28th March 7-9pm
Exhibition Saturday 29th March – Sunday 13th April
10.30am-4pm weekdays, Sunday 12-4pm
Aluminium, white metal, steel
83 Diam. x 8 mm
©Stephen Bottomley
Photo by artist
Textile and Aluminium test pieces
©Susan Telford & Elaine Bremner
Photo by artist
These original gold-coloured anodised aluminium panels were replaced in 2024 with a new bronze metal alloy after restoring the Crown's timber frame.
Glasgow School of Art's Design School staff, all established makers and researchers, are members of a research group called 'Drawing Threads' established in 2022. Re-inSpired is the group's first joint exhibition, which has allowed working with the original metal that spent sixty years above the church and interrogates their practice-based and led approaches to making and material innovation through personal and collaborative work.
Anodized aluminum, Silk, Polyester filament
©Yitong Zhang & Anita Sarkezi
Digital Media
©Kim McNeil
Image with permission from Pollock Hammond Architects and Conservations Consultants
The St Michael’s church spire, known as the ‘Crown of Thorns’, was designed by Geoffrey Clarke RA and installed in 1964. The distinctive structure has a wooden subframe, clad initially in gold-coloured anodised aluminium, that had worn back gradually to its original silver-grey finish. The structure, visible from the M9 motorway and Edinburgh-Glasgow train line, initially dividing local opinion- became a familiar and arguably iconic structure for Linlithgow. After sixty years of exposure to the Scottish weather and elements, the original wooden substructure needed to be replaced where rot had set in, and the deteriorating metal cladding renewed. Scaffolding was erected, and the original cladding was replaced with new bronze alloy metal cladding in a project that cost around £400K. £220,000 was raised by the church and the local community, and other sponsors contributed, including Historic Environment Scotland £90.4k, The Church of Scotland General Trustees £40k, The Scottish Landfill Trust £30k and the Pilgrim Trust £10k, in a project led on behalf of the church by retired architect Brian Lightbody. The project was managed by local architects Pollock Hammond and constructed by Matheson Ltd who had been the original cladding contractors in 1964.
Pieces of the original sheet metal cladding, a gold-coloured anodised aluminium, were offered to the Silversmithing and Jewellery department in early 2024 by Kirsten Davies and Brian Lightbody for potential project use.