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This is a new design I am adding to my site. I will offer it in a 7″ and a 5 1/2″ version – fluting or plain.
Archive for April, 2009
I thought I would post some more pictures of some of the beautiful homes in Natchez, MS. These particular homes are near the Stanton Hall home.
Stanton Hall from the West.
Stanton Hall from the East
This lovely fence is in front of the an old estate built in the mid 1800′s – the Choctaw. The lovely girl is my wife.
So many of these homes have mahogany doors for the main entrance. This door is awesome.
This white oak door is the main entry for Stanton Hall. You can’t really see it but the applied molding is an egg an dart motif.
I liked the tapered columns on this small home.
Really neat bowed porch columns.
I often have to describe to my customer how the bottom rail of a balustrade should be designed to shed water to reduce rot. This is an excellent example of how they did it in the old days.
The cat was practically asking us to take her picture. Many of the old top rails were round or oval in their cross section. This railing has an oval profile.
This is my next installment on Rendering my tapered newels. I have added a fluting to one of the newels. This is supposed to be Mahogany. Thanks to the Vectorworks community for their help.
This home is actually not in Natchez but one driving North to Natchez from Baton Rouge. It is closest to St Francisville, LA. The live oaks frame the home better than any picture frame could.
My Wife and I had an opportunity to go to Natchez, MS this Spring and view some of the wonderful old homes there. Natchez sits atop a 200 foot bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. Following are a few samples of what we saw. We have not had a chance to see some of the more famous homes in the area. So if you are from Natchez viewing this – no angry letters please – we hope to add them later.
If you get a chance to go to Natchez you at least have to go here. The front yards of these homes directly overlook the Mississippi River from about 100 feet up. The residents access their homes from an alley behind their homes.
The home above is a Bed and Breakfast
This is my first attempt at modeling what I can my Pottery Newels. A customer in the Mobile, Alabama area some time back asked me to reproduce a newel and set of balusters that his wife saw in a Pottery Barn catalog. They weren’t for sale but were just part of a sales page. I posted pictures on my web site and have had a number of customers ask for them.
The larger newels is 8″ by 54″ high and the smaller brother is 5 1/2″ X 52″ high.
This is my first real stab and trying to make the newels photo realistic. I definitely have some work to do but not bad I think.
I’m still playing with this tapered newel design and sort of like this style better. They look more like classic Greek columns and can be fluted or left plain. The smaller newel is 5 1/2″ wide and the larger one is 7″. The newel on the far left has the classic bow while the two others are a straight taper. The straight taper is better I think.
I’ve been working on my 3D modeling and rendering and want to create some newel designs. OK the modeling is coming along but I have lots of work to do as for rendering. I’m having fun with the modeling at least. The image below is my shot at developing a tapered newel with the option of fluting. I like the simplicity of the design but am unsettled about how much taper to use – extreme taper or slight. Hope you like the colors.
These are of course over-the-post newels and require a newel cap that will match the handrail profile.
