Visitors brushed their hands contemplatively over his superbly crafted surfaces. Unlike the modeller or indirect carver, who first produces a maquette in a material such as clay as a pointer to his finished piece, the rarer direct carver works assuredly from the outset with hammer and chisel Brancusi was Tamburrini’s inspiration. “I am for rhythmic forms of line and movement, which requires simplification,” he said.Again, unusually, Tamburrini chose to cast limited-edition bronzes in runs of six or nine not from clay but from these direct carvings. Thus, attenuated, Giacometti-like figures or a more conventional torso originally carved in wood when cast might retain the grain in the bronze. To bring this out, the final patination colouring would emphasise that feature.Tamburrini was scrupulous in matching the patination to the piece. Thus, his fast-selling sculpture of a naiad was patinated turquoise, to match her watery origins. A small torso of Lamia, as in the Keats poem, transformed by Hermes from a snake into a beautiful maiden, was coloured a suitable green.
Icarus, a favourite Tamburrini subject, was burnished, appropriate for one who flew too near the sun.After the 1990 Hunt Gallery show, recognition followed fast for the ageing Tamburrini. There was an exhibition at Bexhill Museum in 1993, the year he was naturalised a British subject and two years before he was elected an international affiliate of the Royal Society of British Sculptors at his first attempt. John Hunt in London and Nick Bowlby in Tunbridge Wells both staged shows, to celebrate Tamburrini’s 90th birthday, in 1996. Into his nineties he continued producing, in Bowlby’s words, “shapes from the first day of creation, unsullied and pure”.By David Buckman. Christopher William Baisely Grigson, electronics engineer and naval architect: born Hoshangabad, India 1 December 1926; Fellow, Trinity College Cambridge 1962-68; director, Bang Tank 1968-92; married 1962 Helle Bang (three daughters); died Grimstad, Norway 19 February 2001.
Christopher William Baisely Grigson, electronics engineer and naval architect: born Hoshangabad, India 1 December 1926; Fellow, Trinity College Cambridge 1962-68; director, Bang Tank 1968-92; married 1962 Helle Bang (three sons, three daughters); died Grimstad, Norway 19 February 2001.
A fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a brilliant lecturer, Christopher Grigson seemed set for an academic career. Instead, he joined his father-in-law’s shipowning business in Norway and became involved with the engineering aspects of tanker shipping. At the end of his life he was recognised as a distinguished naval architect. His life was a triumph of willpower over personal adversity.Grigson’s invention of scanning electron diffraction in the 1950s was used in a range of applications.
He worked in the team of Professor Sir Charles (“Uncle”) Oatley which developed the scanning electron microscope (SEM) to a stage of practical usefulness. It remains to this day one of the most useful instruments for high-resolution microscopy.His later work made significant contributions to the discussion of friction and other components of hydrodynamic ship resistance of particular interest to naval architects.Christopher Grigson was born in India in 1926. His father, Sir Wilfrid Grigson, was Deputy Commissioner in the former Central Provinces of India and became an adviser to the Nizam of Hyderabad. Christopher and his sister Claudia (a medic who married Henry Chilver, sometime Chadwick Professor of Civil Engineering at University College London: now Lord Chilver) attended prep school in Sussex.Whilst on holiday with an aunt and uncle in Cambridge, he contracted acute osteomyelitis in his right hip which confined him to bed for two years and caused much pain (this was before penicillin and antibiotics). He was brought up in effect by his uncle and aunt, and in 1946 he won a place at Cambridge to read Mechanical Sciences at Trinity. He took Firsts in Part I and, in spite of being confined to bed for more than half a year, Part II, in 1950.His father had been killed in an air crash in 1948.
Thereafter Christopher spent much spare time with his mother in her family home in Cornwall, where he developed a love of the Cornish coast and of yachting from Polperro. However she, too, died suddenly, in 1957.With improved health, he took a PhD in electronics in the Engineering Department at Cambridge, becoming a University Demonstrator in 1953, a Lecturer in 1957 and a Fellow of Trinity in 1962 the same year that he married Helle Bang, a stunning Norwegian blonde who was studying languages at the university. They spent a sabbatical year at Bell Telephone Laboratories, in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and then, in 1968, he joined Helle’s father’s firm Bang Tank in Kristiansand, Norway.After the death of his father-in-law, Jorgen Bang, Grigson became more involved with management. In partnership he owned the tanker Athene which in 1977 survived, with only minor damage, an estimated 30-metre wave off Port Elizabeth a testimony to its sound design and construction.In 1992 Christopher and Helle Grigson, with their three daughters and three sons, moved to the old Bang family house in Grimstad.
