William Pye Fountain

In a foray into more artistic industries, RPT worked with artist William Pye with two of his designs in the creation of unique water features. Only twice has Pye used acrylic in the creation of his sculptures, and our Highly Engineered Acrylic was selected for both of those projects.

In the Charybdis fountain, RPT supplied a Highly Engineered Acrylic tube measuring 8 feet in diameter (2.4m) and 7.5 feet tall (2.3m). Inside the tube is a vortex of spinning water, designed to imitate the punishment the Greek god Zeus inflicted upon Charybdis, one of the Sirens, for stealing oxen from Hercules.

In this fountain, the water level of the vortex changes throughout the day, and at various points, it spills over the infinity-edge cylinder into a catch basin below. This fountain is the largest vortex water sculpture that Pye has made and, according to his Web site, our acrylic has “…enabled Pye to extend his sculptural language and to explore more ways in which to challenge the wayward element of water.”

The Clearwater Cube was the first water sculpture Pye made using our Highly Engineered Acrylic. After visiting our Grand Junction, Colorado facility, he determined that this would be an ideal medium for his artistic expressions of water as the acrylic does not distort or discolor the water, but merely functions to display the water for all that it is. This water sculpture was made for a display garden at the Chelsea Flower Show 2000 and helped earn the owner of the garden a gold medal.