Cox's Seats

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The Project arose from a visit to the Common Ground offices in Convent Garden soon after I had finished the Milestone Commission for Huntcliff. The idea was to design and make seats for a new orchard; on the site of an old one, to coincide with Apple Day 1992. They had initiated the idea of an annual festival celebrating apples for the 21st October two years earlier and wanted to celebrate the life and apple of Richard Cox through a ‘permanent’ seat that would also be a work of art.
I designed and made the seats in close collaboration with Common Ground. We made them multi-purpose acting as; seats/platforms/tree-guards and gave them a voice through words stamped into the surface. The site was a piece of ground in Colnebrook in Berkshire near where the first Coxs Apple tree was created.
The three seats spelt out COX and were covered with information about the man and his famous apple. I had an incomplete ABC of letter punches that was kindly supplemented free by Edward Prior & Son Ltd ‘for advertising purposes’. I used the punches to write ‘sayings’ about the man and spelled out some of the names given to the apple all over the world: Aranciata di Cox, Cox’s Orangen Reinette, Coxova Renata, Cox’s Orangen Peppin, Cox’s Orange Pepping, Cox’s Orange Pippeling, Coxs Pomeranzen-Pepping,Koksova oranjeva renata, Koksa Pomaranczowa, Orangs de Cozx, Renata Coxa pomaranzowa and Renet Cox portocaliu.
This was a time when I used the forge both to make sculpture and utilitarian objects and this project was easily the most complex and was made up of the greatest number of pieces I had ever handled.
The flat rings for the seats were rolled in Chichester by JR Fabrications and the planting of new saplings and preparation of the foundations were carried out by the Colne Valley Groundwork Trust. Local schools were involved in the planting and subsequent picking of the apples.