Cook’s life and adventures played a huge part in the designs husband and wife Lee and Jill Brewster produced for the floor, furniture and wall panels in the children’s waiting area.
The Darlington couple have given people a flavour of some of the cultures and mysterious people the captain and his crew may have encountered on their travels.
The table and benches are robust and designed to be moved about – the benches making lots of different shapes including a circle to use as a boat and the images came from a variety of sources including aboriginal art and ancient maps of the seas.
Painstakingly carved out of solid oak, the material will also give you an insight into the natural products that would most certainly have played an important role in Cook’s time – of course ships themselves would have been made of oak!
The wall panels are visual rather than functional depicting far off lands so different from our own and the elaborate floor is based around a journey perhaps along a stretch of water.
The animals the children will see along their adventure are derived from other cultural backgrounds around the world and the aim was to make the area a brighter, more stimulating environment for young people to be in.
Artists
Lee Brewster
Jill Brewster