Trip to The Haining

Today, we went for a visit to The Haining Estate, Selkirk.  The purpose of the visit was to record and detail information regarding our Assignment. The assignment was to take photos and drawings so we could take information back to the classroom and design ideas for the café.

The Haining lies in the Ettrick Valley, at the heart of the Scottish Borders, within the Royal Burgh of Selkirk, 30 miles south of Edinburgh and just over 20 miles north of the border with England.

The Haining Estate is now ran as a charitable trust and relies on volunteer’s to help maintain the house and grounds, since the death of the owner Andrew Nimmo-Smith.  The trust has set out a long term vision to develop the house and estate as a focus for the arts and contemporary culture. The Haining have exhibitions, music, meetings, fairs, educational initiatives and community celebrations and is also hired out for weddings. Our assignment is to have three ideas to incorporate Art and Design in the future plans of The Haning Estate.  One of the future developments is a café.

The Haning Estate has an arched entrance that leads onto the woodland drive, to the house and gates itself. Upon viewing the property you can tell it’s a Georgian building.

The wood shutters and columns stand out as an interesting characteristic, and are visually pleasant. This is a feature I’d like to use in my design for the café. I think bringing the columns inside the café using trompe l’oeil to create a realistic design on the wall as a feature is something I’d like to create.

The Haining has a vast amount of woodland and this is something I would like to use in my second choice for the design brief. A play park, trails, elf/fairy gardens and game stations are some of the ideas I have. I would like to education the children using wildlife and forestry making learning fun and factual. 

Another idea I had was to design Menu holders. Made from wood, to look like the shutters or to have a silhouette of the haining.
I did look at the image of The White House and liked the 3 colour monochrome effect it had.. I do think that this would work well for The Haining

Again I haven’t yet made to much research into how it would come about or look. I do have many more ideas running through my head and will have to look, feel and play around some more before I get my 3 definite designs.

The Haining

The Haining

Statue I'd like to use on the cushion plan I have

One of the trees i'd like to use on the cushion plan I have..

detail of the columns

I plan to use this image in the cafe walls to make a full length mural. The columns I'd use as a trompe l'oeil design.

Reflections  Im going to try and create this to use in my project as I feel its an important part of the haining

Studios could hold open events for families and incorpate seasonal learning, leaves finding, wildlife watchin and habitats etc

The woodland park for children to explore, play and learn.  I woud like to create a fun and adventous path for younger and older children to follow around the loch. adding play slides and swings, elf houses and fairy magic. 

This tree would make a good place to advertise fairy adventures as its on the way up to the carpark just before the house..The old cut down tree next to it could be used or carved...

Forest paths could led to a fun play area

On visiting the haining I really liked the reeds that were in the loch.. I have decided that I would like to create a cushion of four designs incorparating the loch in watercolour effect on fabric and then having a dark inked image over the background.. I plan to use a tree as one design, the reeds as another and maybe the statue of the womans head as another. These are works in progress.