'1479 plates', Combe Down Stone Mines Project

'1479 plates' by Chris Tipping - In celebration of the Combe Down Stone Mines Stabilisation Project The Octagon, 25 Milson Place, Bath, BA1 1BZ 24th October - 18th November 2009 The Octagon exhibition features Chris Tipping's map of 788 bone china dinner plates - entitled '1479 plates' - which explores the relationship between present day engineering and mining technology, stone mines heritage, natural history, and two 18th century entrepreneurs Ralph Allen and Josiah Wedgwood. The work was created in collaboration with Dr Katie Bunnell Team Leader Autonomatic - 3D Digital Production Research at University College Falmouth. 691 households affected by the stabilisation works will be gifted a ceramic plate - one small part of the map - representing not only the individual household but also the mining underworld beneath it. Following their display at the Octagon, the original 788 dinner plates will form a large-scale permanent installation in Combe Down village. "We were excited and enthusiastic about the project from the start. It presented us with useful challenges from a number of perspectives including: the technical demands of working on a vast scale with huge amounts of digital data; the complexity and sometimes seemingly contradictory requirement for the design to work at scale, but also for each plate to have an aesthetic quality and clarity of its own; the need to experiment with new drawing tools and develop innovative qualities that would enable us to realise Chris' ideas; and finally the need to produce these qualities in a digitally printed ceramic form". Dr Katie Bunnell. Autonomatic Falmouth The Combe Down Stone Mines Stabilisation Project will be complete towards the end of 2009 when 25 hectares of very shallow limestone mine will have been filled with approximately 600,000 cubic metres of foamed concrete, the largest project of its kind in the world. Over the years some 700 houses have been built over the mines from which the stone was extracted to build Georgian Bath. Digital Ceramics by Digital Ceramics Ltd Exhibition Consultants & Management - REM Event Management