The original terra cotta sculpture used for a visual reference idea originally came from the Senator hotel, Atlantic City, NJ which was demolished in 1999 by implosion. Before the hotel was demolished much of the terra cotta ornament on the facade was salvaged by a commercial salvage outfit. The sculpture was a profile of a Griffin with a sun design and border moldings was one of the pieces salvaged. It appeared to be one of the last pieces the store had left for sale at a whopping $3,200 price tag.
I decided it was a really nice design concept that was worth creating in a new model concentraiting on the Griffin motif and in low relief like the ancient Roman and Greek stone carvings. The sun, rays and borders were unnecessary and cluttering. The original salvaged piece was priced at $3200- a price tag that is well beyond the means of your average "Joe," and probably most people reading this page for something to hang on the wall wouldn't you say?

It is curiously a coincidence working on this Griffin and thinking back to the book I recently purchased about fossils. The ancient Greeks and others found dinosaur and protoceratops fossil bones and fragments, huge skeletons and concluded they were all a race of giant humanoids, warriors, "heros" or gods, but the Griffin differed in that regard because of certain anatomy about the head which was extremely fragile and always found very damaged in fossils- this was assumed by the ancients to have been remains of WINGS, thus the legend of the Griffin and his stylized, and later- heavily Victorianized depictions appeared in artwork of all kinds.

These days of course we know Griffins never existed as depicted, but the ancients actually believed they did,and even wrote descriptions of ferocious winged creatures in many journals, books and other literature whose bones were found in various locations.

The mythical Griffin is shown in the book "The Fossil Hunters" a fascinating book if I do say so and I highly recommend buying a copy.
The book author concluded that it was almost certain that the Protoceratops fossil remains are what the ancients were finding, and that the whole myth and lore of griffins started with finding these fossils and incorrrectly identifying portions of them as "wings", a little artistic license and imagination came up with the form we see today in the old art.
The author pointed out how all the other Greek entities like Zeus, Apollo, Medusa etc were obviously fictional or lore while the griffin had always been described as a real but misunderstood animal, one that still lived at that time but in far off lands like Mongolia because no one had seen a live one- but they had "proof" they existed and were once inhabiting Greece because they had the bones!

The book has a good old photo of a protoceratops fossil, and it is easy to see how the whole romantic fictional story of the Griffin came about after seeing this, the beak and face are absolutely recognizable as a "Griffin";