Blue-plaques 1 (original) (raw)

A blue plaque on the building immediately conveys that the building

is important or someone very significant lived there.

Ned Heywood has been making heritage ceramics for 16 years and blue plaques for the past 10.

All are made from white stoneware clay fired to 1280°C giving very desirable properties:- harder than steel (cannot be scratched with steel tools), unaffected by all solvents and most acids, colourfast forever, frost-proof, rot-proof, rodent-proof and flame-proof. They can be expected to last for many hundreds of years without maintenance. These characteristics of ceramic materials are due to them being composed of metal oxides, they are not attacked by oxygen, the element that causes most materials to rust, fade or decay.

These properties, combined with the high skills of the British pottery industry, resulted in the Victorian's choice of ceramic for the first London blue plaque scheme over 140 years ago.

Although the ways Ned forms soft clay and creates precise lettering use innovative techniques,

the finished products are part of the very long tradition of using ceramics, one of mans oldest technologies, to inform the present about the past.

All of Ned's production is individually handmade by him and his assistant Julia Land

Commissioning process Ned Heywood prefers initial contact by telephone to discuss the project (01291 624836) and subsequently by e-mail for confirmation of text, draft designs etc. (ned@nedheywood.com). Preliminary discussions, first draft designs and quotations are normally provided free of charge.