The Sun King
David Harber has mastered the ancient art of making sundials and his timeless pieces are a regular highlight of the Chelsea Flower Show
Above: David Harber
It’s impossible to think of Chelsea in May without also bringing to mind the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. One regular exhibitor there is David Harber, maker of bespoke sundials, water features and sculptures. This year, like all the others (for three years he has won the RHS Sundries Trophy) he is putting the finishing touches to a selection of innovative products. Star of the show (so new it isn’t named) will be a bronze sphere with stainless steel and gold-leafed petals. ‘We set up the stand as a garden and put a lot of effort into it,’ says Harber. Those in the know credit Harber as having single-handedly breathed new life into the ancient craft of sundial making. His work graces private gardens, corporate headquarters, national institutions and royal palaces worldwide.
Harber’s interest in sundials started around 15 years ago. In his past life, he has been everything from a potter to a rock-climbing teacher, but he has now found his metier. His very first sundial was based on designs from the Museum of History of Science in Oxford, and he gradually became more intrigued by the art of sundial making. ‘A sundial is a symbol of man striving to master the unfathomable,’ says Harber. ‘Harnessing time is knowledge, and knowledge is power.’ The ancient art of sundial making, as he points out, has been going for thousands of years and spanned many cultures, from the Babylonians and the Chinese to the Greeks. ‘When making sundials, you must work to the rules that have been laid down by every culture in the last 7000 years.’
David Harber’s pieces are works of great beauty: the styling is fluent, crisp and (forgiving the pun) timeless. He uses a variety of materials including brass, steel, mirror, glass, stainless steel, slate and stone. These days, at Harber’s Oxfordshire workshops, he has a team of craftsmen working on 30 to 40 projects at a time. They blend techniques, from the ancient, such as hand letter-cutting, to the modern, such as laser-cutting. Does Harber, one wonders, like to get his hands dirty too? He says he does ‘to the chagrin of his wife’. His real skill, of course, is coming up with the designs in the first place. It’s clearly an organic process. He laughs. ‘I had been struggling with one idea since October, and was due to present it to my client,’ he says. ‘At the last moment I had a flash of inspiration and made up a model at breakneck speed – the client was over the moon and so was I!’
Although exhibiting at Chelsea is a key time of year for Harber, he is always busy. Currently he and his team are putting the finishing touches to five bespoke pieces at the only hotel at Terminal 5, due to open early this summer, which includes a six metre-high glass water feature. ‘Doing this has taken us to a new level of engineering so it has been all hands to the pumps!’ he says. When it comes to designing a special piece, he likes to come up with a design ‘that either offers an optical illusion or something quirky: a feature that will stop the viewer in his or her tracks’. Even his core range of sundials, water features and sculptures, some of which have imposing names such as Dark Planet and Vortex, will be ‘reinvented’ every now and then to put a new twist on an existing design.
Although much of Harber’s work is corporate, he says that the majority of pieces are done for private clients. Many pieces are commissioned for a special occasion, and each one can be engraved with a special message. ‘Sometimes we’ll sit down with a glass of wine and the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations!’ Harber adds. The design and make process takes around eight weeks, and once a piece is finished Harber and his team will install it into its final resting place. ‘My pieces should be in place for the next 500 years or so,’ he says. “They are there to talk to future generations, so every detail must be perfect.’
David Harber Ltd, Blewburton Barns, Hagbourne Road, Aston Upthorpe, Oxon OX11 9EE, 01235 859300, www.davidharbersundials.co.uk