Peacocks are beautiful birds — but that doesn't mean they're easy to live with. Unless they're not really peacocks at all...
Peacocks look amazing.
But they are horribly, just horribly loud when they start squawking. And, like any large fowl, they have a habit of — ahem — ‘doing their business’ all over your lawn, on your garden paths, and around the paving stones that frame your delightful pond.
Luckily, the peacocks that adorn this website, and pop up occasionally on the pages of our printed Country Life counterpart, have the same graceful lines as the real thing without causing any disturbance to your life. And that disturbance can indeed be great.
The small flaw in this plan is something that you’ve no doubt already spotted: you can’t put a website, or a page from a magazine, on display in your garden. That’s where sculptor Jane Gordon Clark comes in, with this life-size recreation of a peacock in ‘cold-cast bronze resin’. (We’ve no idea what that means, but we’re pretty sure that bronze resin can’t poo on the grass, so you’re safe.)
What prompted this fine piece of work by the artist? Well, it seems that Jane’s experiences of these birds mirror our own fairly closely:
‘I was inspired by the peacocks in a friend’s garden, where they roam imperiously as if royalty, surveying their realm,’ says Jane.
‘My peacock can gracefully enhance a garden, but will not screech.’
The peacocks can be commissioned at £7,500 — see www.janegordonclark.co.uk for more details.
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