PERCHANCE TO DREAM: Shakespeare's staircase

I used to love reading Shakespeare even when I was a schoolboy. I remember first learning the opening scene of Richard III and reciting it to ducks on holiday. So far in my acting career, I have performed in nine of his plays, on top of the two I did at school. 

With the bard playing such a central role in my life, I wanted to give him a central role in my castle too: so the main staircase is dedicated to Shakespeare and decorated with characters from his plays. 

The Jacobean oak design is copied examples like Blickling Hall and Hatfield House (below).

I made my newel posts from obeche wooden strips covered in pieces of a cheap Chinese wooden fan, all wood-stained along with the obeche steps, stuck onto a bolsa wood frame. That was the easy bit. Figuring out how to make the fiddly balustrades was much harder...

I started with a graph paper design. First I tried cutting it out of thin obeche planks, but the grain of the wood was not fine enough. So I resolved to layer each banister up using cardboard. This process is taking quite some time: the first attempt at one balustrade between two newel posts has taken most of a day! At this rate it will probably be a few months before this stage is completed. 

Once all the balustrades are finished, I will add a bought wooden moulding for the hand rails, and either wood stain or paint them before adding them to the staircase. Then will come the figurines on top of the newel posts, which will be pewter figurines that I have been collecting from myseum and stately home gift shops. The head of one of them will be crowned with a donkey head from a tiny nativity set to be Bottom from A Midsummer Night's Dream!