• My book: The Gargoyler of Greenwich Village (update)

    August 19, 2019

    I am pleased to say I now have printing for the book arranged again and the quality of the printing is excellent as before. I tried an alternate printer that was a little less cost and as soon as I got the two samples I ordered I immediately regretted it, the photos were muddy and dark, the colors washed out and even the actual photos as printed were not as clear and were somewhat “hazy” as you can see in the photo below, the upper photo in each set is the alternate printer, the bottom was printed by Amazon/KDP, mind you the original Kodak print dates back to the 1970s and has damage to it that isn’t going to go away like magic at the printer, but you can clearly see how poor the alternate printer’s work was- darker, not clear, foggy or hazy, detail is lost, the colors are dull. In contrast the Amazon/KDP is warmer, clearer/sharper, no “haze” and more vibrant colors.

    These are just quick snaps with an iPhone of the two books laid on the kitchen counter;

     

     

    The gloss cover on both printed books however looked the same and excellent;

     

    You can order a signed, numbered copy directly from me for $35 total, ppd,  or you spend more and get it from Amazon for $39.95 plus tax and shipping but they won’t be signed or numbered as they won’t pass through my hands, link to order the book;

    My BOOK The Gargoyler of Greenwich Village

     

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  • Sullivanesque panel Nr 3600 Morton School, Hammond, Indiana

    July 22, 2019

    A client purchased a number of sculptures for his home, one was the Morton school Sullivanesque frieze. We decided to do this interior cast stone version for him in the aged buff yellow finish and I think anyone can agree it looks very “old world” an just like a weathered antique fresh off the demolition site!

    The Oliver P. Morton High School, built in 1936 was located at  7040 Marshall Avenue, Hammond, Indiana and was demolished in the late 1980s. Once in a while an oddball piece or two of original salvaged terracotta artifacts come up for sale at pretty high prices. Many have chips and other damage to them as well as inappropriate removal by powersaws of their back sections; supposedly to reduce the weight, but which instead severely weakens the artifact and destroys it’s integrity.

    The amount of  “excess” weight removed is miniscule, on what might be 85 pounds it’s removing at best 5 to 10 pounds.

    Nominal 13-1/2″ high by 15-1/2″ wide, 3″ deep WEIGHT: 22#.

    Read more at: https://www.urbansculptures.com/sculptures/3600.php
    Copyright © 2014 Randall’s Urban Sculptures

     

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  • Morton school Hammond Indiana George Elmslie, Louis Sullivan Sullivanesque

    July 8, 2019

    I’ve had this design in my lineup for  quite a while, but this week a client purchased a cast along with several others and I started thinking that since I need to order in some materials, maybe now would be a good time to order what I need to “convert” this design so it can also be offered in my hand-pressed kiln fired red terracotta.

    With an original selling for around $750 at salvage outfits I know there’s a lot of people who don’t want to pay $750 plus shipping for one of the originals, and only being able to obtain one, and it having chips and damage on top of that, but they would be interested in the design in a fired terracotta from me that can be purchased in the quantity they want or need at a quarter of that price,  and they don’t have to settle for damaged goods either!

    I’m going to have to make a new rubber mold to replace the old one I have for this as it is tearing due to the purple Quantum Silicones rubber I used years ago that turned out to be total garbage, once I do that I can  pour a rubber positive in the new mold and then make the plaster piece mold off that to use for pressing the clay version.

    The design is from the demolished Morton High School  (1936, Hammond Indiana) This was George Elmslie’s final project before his death. Elmslie was the chief ornamental designer for Louis Sullivan. This piece is cataloged as an M-5 Main building cornice from the book Architectural Ornament by Krutty and Schmitt.

    Louis Sullivan frieze Nr 3600

     

     

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  • Hand-pressed red terracotta architectural leaf block

    April 18, 2019

    Now I have the first hand-pressed red terracotta architectural leaf blocks done and ready to start drying, this will shrink somewhat and I have not priced these yet, but pretty soon I will know the exact size it will wind up, and a price determined.

    These would be very nice for accents or even in a row as a frieze band, they will be kiln fired, so they can be embedded into a brick or stone wall, or otherwise used outdoors.

     

     

     

    A timelapse video showing how these are made;

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  • Washington Irving Louis Sullivan Sullivanesque pier capital model progress

    April 1, 2019

    Working now on final cleaning up, detailing and refining, I haven’t had time to work on it the last couple of weeks as other projects and things needed my attention.

    I expect it will take quite a few more hours to finally get this done, the clay is getting firmer despite misting it with water and keeping it covered with plastic, so it needs to be finished as soon as I can get it done!

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  • James W Scoville building terracotta

    February 28, 2019

    This James W Scoville building Elmslie “Sullivanesque” sculpture is now out of the kiln, it is still about 200 degrees and had to be handled with gloves, it turned out perfect!


    One can see the color change in photos from the previous dry/unfired state and now that it’s been fired to a little over 2,079 degrees, actually cone 2 tipped because I added a 15 minute “hold” at the set temperature, but because of the “heat work” it went a little higher, but the result is better and the color is nice and even top to bottom, whereas in the past the very bottom of large pieces like this would turn out slightly lighter due to slightly lower temperatures near the floor of the kiln.

    https://www.urbansculptures.com/cart/product/sullivanesque-panel-after-james-w-scoville-chicago-nr-ls-2/

     

    A Virginia museum  has an original, that one still has the old grey paint slathered all over it but the red clay underneath can be seen.

    Someone has one they have been trying to sell for quite a while for $5,000 !!

    https://www.vmfa.museum/piction/6027262-7945338/

    Exterior Ornament from the James W. Scoville Building, Chicago (Primary Title)
    Dankmar Adler, 1844-1900 (Artist)
    Louis Sullivan, American, 1856 – 1924 (Artist)
    Northwestern Terra Cotta Co. (Artist)
    probably modeled by, Kristian Schneider (Modeler)
    Date:
    1884-1885

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  • The Jamws W Scoville Elmslie Sullivanesque panel kiln firing

    February 26, 2019

    After 4 weeks of drying I placed the pressed clay Chicago James Scoville building “Sullivanesque” panel in the kiln and turned ‘er on.


    I changed the program on the controller slightly for this piece by bumping the temperature up and adding 10 minutes soak time to when the kiln reaches that temperature.
    About 37 hours from now the kiln will shut off and take half a day to cool down before I see what I get.

    Meanwhile, here it is sitting in the kiln when I turned it on. The light yellow colored deals touching the back of the panel are shelf posts and I placed them on both front and back so that should the panel want to tip- it can’t.
    The two red pyramid haped deals resting on top of the posts are called “cones” and they will partially melt and bend over at specified temperatures each uniquely is formulated to do that at, so they tell me if the kiln got hot enough- what it was set to, or too hot- hotter than I set it for.
    In this case there’s a cone 1 which bends over at 2,079 degrees F and a cone 2 which bends over at 2,088 degrees F, and yes they are THAT accurate that 9 degrees in a furnace that is over 2,000 degrees can be measured accurately.

    The temperature and soak time much like baking a cake or making toast in a toaster- also affects the final color and “doneness” of the terracotta. This clay I use is a brick red that as the temperature goes above that cone 1 starts to turn brown- it can take cone 5 (2,167 degrees) at which point it turns a dark chococate brown! I’ve never gone higher than cone 1 but it would be interesting to experiment with a smaller piece.

    So far I’ve shown the modelling process, the hand-pressing process and now the kiln firing process will wrap it all up in a sort of educational “How the architectural terracotta was made” in Sullivan’s day and before.

     

     

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  • First pressing of the James Scoville “Sullivanesque” terracotta panel

    January 28, 2019

    I pressed the first  LS2 panel today,  it took 60 pounds of clay,  the sculpture will need to firm up a little and dry a little before I can finish cleaning up and refining the surface details.

    It takes about 2- 3 weeks of slow, careful drying of pressed clay sculptures of this size before they can be kiln fired.

    The firing process in an electric kiln takes approximately 36 hours and the high quality clay I use is fired to what is known as “Cone 1”- about 2,100 degrees F which vitrifies it nicely to become harder and less porous than standard hard bricks are.

    Once the sculpture was removed from the plaster mold as shown, I have to spend considerable time going over every milimeter of the surface to model-in any missing details, sharpen edges, eliminate any surface defects, mold seams etc.

    Each is a signed, numbered and dated work of art.

     

    First pressed panel

    A timelapse video of the whole process is here;

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  • Washington Irving school, Hammond Ind W1 pier capital model started

    January 19, 2019
    Washington Irving school pier capital
    Starting the model of the W1 pier capital

    To-day I started the process on the Washington Irving school, once at 4727 Pine St., Hammond Ind W1 pier capital model.

    I happened to find photos of this interesting 1936 George Elmslie/Louis Sullivan “Sullivanesque” style design at the City Museum in St Louis and decided to create a model of it. I was able to scale the size of the original terracotta artifacts to about 20″ square.  Though the originals were actually about 20″ deep embedded into the wall as well as projecting out from the wall about 5″,  I needed to modify that original configuration to a more practical one for how my clients would likely use it- hanging ON the wall, or embedded 3-4″ into a brick or stone wall, so with that end goal in mind this model is designed to do both as it will be a nominal 4″ deep.

    The original pier capitals projected out from the face of the brick facade by about 5″, as a result the design on the fronts of the capitals wrapped around on the two sides, since doing that configuration would mean making my model 5″ deeper yet (9″ total) it would make it a less than useful design for how it would be used in a non pier capital display, so I will not wrap the design around the sides beyond possibly the smallest amount on the corners.

    George Grant Elmslie & William Hutton- architects, and the Midland terracotta  Co with modeller Albert Fritz are said to have executed the original terracotta artifacts for the school in 1936, the school was demolished in 2003.

    As the description on a placard at the City Museum says- this is an outstanding example of the Louis Sullivan style of architectural ornament. The Art Deco inspired chevron or “V” is surrounded by thistle leaves and is sprouting leaves of a plant or bud of a flower. The flower which made up of seeds emerges from the plant stalk.

    In looking at the design itself, I noticed this curiosity which I circled in red;

    The modeller, said to be Fritz Albert, obviously left that little square of material in the center of both larger squares, in actual modelling practice the easiest way to scribe or cut those vertical and horizontal cross lines would be to make one motion top to bottom and left to right with a tool, but Fritz didn’t do that, instead, he made four cuts to leave that little center intact, the question is why?

    It’s almost as if it’s a deliberate miniature version of one of the four larger squares, but since the Elmslie/Sullivanesque designs were all based on styled organic plant forms and geometric shapes, it may be the four squares and center square are an Art Deco inspired styled four petal flower and bud.

    Since none of those involved are alive to ask, we can only guess, but it makes sense.

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  • James Scoville Elmslie 1884 “Sullivanesque” mold

    January 14, 2019

    The plaster-piece mold for this is done, waiting for the last section to set before taking it apart, and finishing up the last segment of a time-lapse video of it.
    It took 125# of plaster and some 7 gallons of water, about half of that water will evaporate out.
    It will be probably 2 weeks with fans blowing on it to dry it out enough to use for pressing the clay into.
    This is exactly how the working molds were made for all of the Elmslie “Sullivaesque” terracotta, and all of the similar architectural terracotta as well.
    About the biggest difference between then and now is only in my using a rubber positive copy instead of taking this plaster mold directly off the original clay model. With the rubber positive I could make additional or replacement molds from that whereas the clay original master is typically destroyed in the process.

    Back in the old days these kinds of designs were typically custom made for each building job, so they tended to only need a few of each, a dozen maybe. If they made terracotta cornices and windowsills, these were typically made by extruding the clay thru a die under mechanical pressure for small ones, for larger ones they used a system of running a template along the clay which was the same way they did the elaborate plaster ceiling crown moldings- shaped in place using wood runner strips and templates.

    Elmslie Scoville design mold
    Elmslie Scoville design mold work in progress

     

    Elmslie Scoville design mold
    Elmslie Scoville design mold completed.

     

    Elmslie Scoville design mold completed
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  • Two new models in the works, Scoville lunette and Washington Irving school pier capital W-1

    January 6, 2019

    I printed out the two full sized reference images I need for the two planned models, a tape measure opened to 24″ is for visually scaling the sizes in the image.

    Sullivan Elmslie design

    The one on the right is  a W-1 pier capital design from the Washington Irving school, Hammond Indiana, the one on the left is a lunette design from the James Scoville building in Chicago.

    The Scoville lunette is from an assembly of two that were sold at an auction outfit for some $15,000, while the pier capital from the 1936 Hammond Indiana school was designed by George Grant Elmslie and William Hutton in the Sullivanesque style by Louis Sullivan. The school was demolished in 2003 and this particulat artifact resides at the city museum in St Louis. I found some great photos of it that were taken by a photographer on a photo sharing site, after I inquired about the artifact’s dimensions he very generously uploaded 109 photos to an album for me to download and see, the 109 photos were all taken of artifacts in the city museum’s collection of Elmslie/Sullivanesque artifacts and others, a real treasure trove and there’s other designs I like that I may also make models of at a later date.

    The pier capital will require a little thought as it was originally a 20″ cube, with all but about 5″ of it embedded into the brick wall, the sides of it that were visible had the same triangular designs as the face does, so that presents  a couple of issues to decide on, for the interior cast stone  the casts dont need to be  deep as they would hang ON the wall, but I plan to do these in terracotta and those could be embedded INTO a wall, so if I retain the original configuration of the sides having a design instead of being flat, then I would have to make this considerably deeper- say 7-8″ deep so about 4-5″  can project out while 3-4″ would be embedded, we’ll see what I decide on that, meanwhile I will probably start the Scoville Lunette model first.

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  • Louis Sullivan, Elmslie, Sullivanesque terracotta

    January 2, 2019

    As I look around in google  and flickr’s images, there’s certainly no lack of a large variety of Sullivan & Elmslie designed architectural terracotta, both pictured on building facades as well as stripped-off artifacts such as those found at the City Museum in St Louis from demolitions.

    As I find interesting designs that I like and think will sell, I’ll be working on more models of these unique and interesting designs.

    I’ve already identified at least two pieces I want to model next, the first one was from the same James Scoville building as the recently finished design with the webbed lotus leaf design.

    The original shown below was sold at an auction site a few years ago for a whopping $11,250 plus the usual buyer’s premium which tends to add about another 20% and sales tax on top which brought the final price on this to an insane $15,000;

     

     

    I’ll probably work on developing the design and starting the model of the main section of the above in the next 2-3 weeks, I may make the side pieces as well since it’s MUCH easier to make them and have them fit properly if they are done together, it would take 10 different uniquely shaped moldings for the surround, but they were nothing but flat blocks with a half-round design on the surface acting as a nice visual border.

    Probably when it’s done in fired red terracotta the pricing for each main motif sans the borders will run around $325, but it will be available in interior cast stone as well. The borders will be modelled and stored away in case a client wants them, I won’t automatically just make molds of those as there may not be any interest in the border pieces.

     

    The other design I liked is at the City Museum in St Louis MO., I once went to St Louis to visit a friend of mine there, and to exhibit at a dog show sponsored by Purina, my hotel was some distance from the show grounds on the Purina property, but I visited St Louis.

    So this is a pier capital from the Washington Irving public  school that was demolished in Indiana, it was about 20″ square, with an interesting repeated design. I’ll be starting  a  model of this soon as well. Probably when it’s done in fired red terracotta the pricing will run around $325, but it will be available in interior cast stone as well.

     

     

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  • Model from the James W. Scoville, Adler, Sullivan, Elmslie Chicago building

    December 29, 2018

    I’ve begun the process last night to take my design  towards making it in hand-pressed kiln fired terracotta, that requires two additional mold making steps, the first of which is making a rubber positive master cast using the new rubber mold, the second step is making a plaster piece-mold taken off the rubber positive.

    Shown below is the rubber positive that was poured in last night- the remaining cavity not filled with that amber colored rubber will be filled with plaster to save on expensive rubber since only the face is the important portion of the design.

    The amount of rubber shown in the mold was 2 gallons total, and this cost just about $200, so it’s easy to see how much it would cost to fill this the rest of the way up with this rubber!

    Once this rubber is cured and the cavity filled to the top with plaster, it’s taken apart and the plaster and rubber master positive can be used to make the plaster piece mold.

    This is similar to the way this was done for the originals my work is based on, though the final plaster piece molds are made identically to the way they were for these pieces back in the 19th  and early 20th century when these ornaments were used on building facades.

    All of the Sullivan/Elmslie designed terracotta ornaments were made exactly the way I make them- hand-pressed clay into plaster piece-molds, and then final finishing and detailing all done by hand one at a time.

    model from the James W. Scoville, Adler & Sullivan designed, Chicago building
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  • Another model from the James W. Scoville, Adler & Sullivan designed, Chicago building

    December 24, 2018

    The Virginia Museum of fine art  which has a few artifacts from this building also has at least one of these lunettes with a very similar design on it as the spandrel panels have.

    I like the shape of it as well, I have no plans to but easily could make the surrounding flat pieces for it if a client wanted them.

    I will be working on this model very soon, of course it takes time and this type of work is done when I have time, and more time for the various mold making processes to get done, but progress photos will come along here soon enough.

    This would most likely be priced around $325 in fired red terracotta.

    The museum has their artifact sized 18-1/4″ x 18-1/2″ and 4″ deep, this size would fit into my existing kiln, so this is another design I can keep my model of full sized like the originals and offer both interior cast-stone this size but less deep to hang ON the wall, and hand-pressed terracotta which will be slightly smaller due to the shrinkage of the clay but made a nominal  3″ deep which can be additionally used outdoors in the garden or embedded into a brick or stone wall of any type.

    1973 HABS photo before demolition (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

     

    Jame scoville building elevation view (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

    Dankmar Adler, 1844-1900
    Louis Sullivan, American, 1856 – 1924 (Architects) Northwestern Terra Cotta Co., probably modeled by, Kristian Schneider  1884-1885

    A photo of the grey painted artifact in the museum which is not on public view at the museum, appears here; https://www.vmfa.museum/piction/6027262-7946023/

    The artifact they have is a gift of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

     

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