A new housing development in Burford Wharf, East London, has a stylish, hand-lettered Welsh slate and Portland limestone circular bench, thanks to a competition run by the Building Crafts College (BCC) in London and won by Lucy Hough (pictured above with her bench).

The developers, Dominion Housing Group, approached the BCC with the idea of holding a competition to design some artwork for the development. Students past and present from the Stonemasonry Diploma Course were invited to submit designs. Lucy\'s was selected.

Lucy is working as a self-employed mason and training as a lettercutter at Richard Kindersley\'s studio in Kennington, as well as teaching two days a week at BCC having completed an NVQ and Diploma in Stonemasonry there in 2005. The inside face of the ring of slate on her bench has a poem running along it, the letters hand cut and gilded by Lucy. She also worked the masonry with help from BCC lecturers Nigel Gilkison and Gary Newton.

Lucy told NSS: "I got the idea for the design from an archaeological survey of the site. Coloured pigments were found in the soil where a mill for dying calico had once been. The Burford Wharf development is very modern, almost futuristic. I wanted to make something that would give a link to its past. I chose excerpts from a poem about colours by Christina Rosetti and have carved these into the slate.

"It has been a brilliant opportunity for me to be able to design and build something on this scale. I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I would not have had the facilities or the resources to make something like this without the College. It\'s been good for them too, the current students have been in and out of the workshop following every stage of the process and learning about the techniques involved in making something like this."

Lucy is available for commissions and can be contacted on Tel: 07736 678274.

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