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By David Coleman
BREWSTER – Golf course designers Brian Silva and Geoff Cornish may be more closely identified with the new Brewster Captain's Course, but golfers will be depending on the skills of Joe
Rees and Dick Clark to show them the way.
The two men, who comprise Cape Craft Signs in Orleans, were chosen over a number of other designers to prepare signs specifying the yardage
and layout of each hold With the formal opening just three days away, they are scurrying, as are many workmen to wrap up the project.
From a 40-square-foot converted chicken coop
down the road from the course, Clark, the carver
is excising the letters to the "Pro Shop" sign while Rees, the designer and draftsman, watches closely the material appears to be a gleaming, black marble but is a closed-cell urethane foam with several coats of glossy automotive enamel. The surface yields without effort to the polished edge of Clark's hand chisel, it is light, and it can be restored to a new appearance with a few swipes of auto polish.
Overcoming the initial opposition of Cornish, Rees said, who favored stone signs, the twosome pitched their sign business to the Golf Committee. "We work out all the details on the
computer," Rees said, "so that when we give someone a sketch ... since it is computer generated, it is exactly what they receive for a finished piece of work. We don't have a note that says
the sign will be a something-shade of green – the color on the drawing is exactly the color of the sign,"
Rees began the project with an aerial photo- graph that Cornish used as
his blueprint for designing the course. Scanning each hole into the computer, Rees was able to locate all of the
features of each hole, including the fairway width and sand bunkers (though the longest par 5s are shortened slightly to fit on the sign) The scale of the holes are not exactly the same one hole to another," he said, "but the proportions of each hole are correct."
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He then submitted this plan to the golf committee for approval before beginning the templates that would be used to carve the signs' profiles.
The squarish signs, with a gentle
arch along the top edge arc slightly reminiscent of the "Welcome to..." municipality signs favored in Massachusetts. "But we gave them the option of having that design feature along the bottom edge, too," Rees explained. "We had taller signs, shorter signs, square signs; we originally submitted some designs just so we could get the reaction of the committee members to them, and as we got more into the meat of the project, we got very efficient at choosing what we thought would work. For instance, the appearance of this [Pro Shop] sign is exactly how they wanted it to be, right down to the little curve in the center
"The committee was very diligent in checking out the details of the signs," Clark said, "and they compared our signs and hole diagrams to the original blueprints."
Clark retired several years ago from a national supermarket chain where he worked as a meat department manager for more than 35 years. "I do everything by hand, now," Clark explains. "When I first
began carving, I used a router and a jig saw, but Fred Jones of Eastham told me if I was going to be serious about carving, I should visit Jay Cook in Stowe, Vermont ... After that, everything is done by hand with
the sets of chisels." Clark acknowledged that a number of signs at the course were cut to the basic shape with power tools. The details were done by hand.
"I don't carve," said Rees,
"and he doesn't do any design, so we work well together. We each do 50 percent of the project, so we put our head together and off we go."
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