This door was made during my residency as an Annie Sloan Painter in Residence: a programme that gave me the freedom to take the Elizabethan research that runs through my practice and apply it to an unexpected surface, using Chalk Paint as both a scholarly reference and a working medium.
This salvaged antique arched door carries its own history before I touched it: original iron slide bolt, original chain, and the authentic bore holes of treated woodworm that I have left visible as part of the piece rather than filled and hidden. It arrived already old. I simply gave it a new conversation to have.
The design comes from the rare sixteenth-century black-and-white wall paintings at The Golden Cross in Oxford: an Italianesque grotesque of scrolling Renaissance ornament that was the height of fashion in Elizabethan England. I have a specific professional connection to this motif. I was part of the team that recreated it on painted cloths for Shakespeare's Birthplace Museum, working from the same source material using traditional techniques. The design on this door draws on that same scholarship.
I painted the grotesque directly over the door's original crusty whitewash using Annie Sloan Graphite Chalk Paint, chosen to echo the lamp black pigment of traditional Elizabethan decoration. The motif is built up through delicate linework, dry-brushing, and thin washes that allow the design to appear to sink into the surface rather than sit on top of it. Hefty, intentional distressing follows: sanding back through the paint to reveal the antique wood grain beneath, in the way that centuries of use reveal the history of a lime-distempered wall.
The edges are finished in a flash of Primer Red, a reference to the red ochre used in historic decoration. The piece is deliberately left unwaxed. The dead matte finish and dry, chalky hand-feel are the point: this is not a polished object. It has the parched, atmospheric quality of a salvaged architectural fragment, which is exactly what it is.
A lean-or-hang artwork. It brings a particular kind of quiet, historic authority to a modern space. Signed by me.
Dimensions: 69 x 169 x 1.5cm.
Delivery & Collection This is a one-of-a-kind painted original, you will need to arrange delivery for this item and pay for this separately. You are very welcome to collect this from me from my Hastings studio. Otherwise, you will need to arrange for your own courier to collect. In either case, please contact me to arrange. info@melissawhite.co.uk and 01424 868048.
This door was made during my residency as an Annie Sloan Painter in Residence: a programme that gave me the freedom to take the Elizabethan research that runs through my practice and apply it to an unexpected surface, using Chalk Paint as both a scholarly reference and a working medium.
This salvaged antique arched door carries its own history before I touched it: original iron slide bolt, original chain, and the authentic bore holes of treated woodworm that I have left visible as part of the piece rather than filled and hidden. It arrived already old. I simply gave it a new conversation to have.
The design comes from the rare sixteenth-century black-and-white wall paintings at The Golden Cross in Oxford: an Italianesque grotesque of scrolling Renaissance ornament that was the height of fashion in Elizabethan England. I have a specific professional connection to this motif. I was part of the team that recreated it on painted cloths for Shakespeare's Birthplace Museum, working from the same source material using traditional techniques. The design on this door draws on that same scholarship.
I painted the grotesque directly over the door's original crusty whitewash using Annie Sloan Graphite Chalk Paint, chosen to echo the lamp black pigment of traditional Elizabethan decoration. The motif is built up through delicate linework, dry-brushing, and thin washes that allow the design to appear to sink into the surface rather than sit on top of it. Hefty, intentional distressing follows: sanding back through the paint to reveal the antique wood grain beneath, in the way that centuries of use reveal the history of a lime-distempered wall.
The edges are finished in a flash of Primer Red, a reference to the red ochre used in historic decoration. The piece is deliberately left unwaxed. The dead matte finish and dry, chalky hand-feel are the point: this is not a polished object. It has the parched, atmospheric quality of a salvaged architectural fragment, which is exactly what it is.
A lean-or-hang artwork. It brings a particular kind of quiet, historic authority to a modern space. Signed by me.
Dimensions: 69 x 169 x 1.5cm.
Delivery & Collection This is a one-of-a-kind painted original, you will need to arrange delivery for this item and pay for this separately. You are very welcome to collect this from me from my Hastings studio. Otherwise, you will need to arrange for your own courier to collect. In either case, please contact me to arrange. info@melissawhite.co.uk and 01424 868048.
