I suppose I’ve been somewhat fascinated by these lions after reading an interesting story a decade ago about the theft of 50 of these from a fifteen story 1928 Art Deco building in Detroit that had been abandoned. Now I’m toying with the idea of making a model of one. The building, known as The Lee Plaza is on the historic register. The building closed in the late 1990s and the ground floor openings were bricked up with concrete blocks to keep vandals out, but the concrete blocks didn’t last long and soon the vandals and the scrappers made their way in and destroyed the interior, ripped out the wiring…

Oops, guess that panel didn’t work well, it was completely destroyed, turned out it was the raku clay and all the other models that had been fired were a different clay. The raku clay should have been better that the other clay since it’s designed for rapid heating and cooling. Oh well, no real loss since I have a mold of it, but it was a surprise it had started cracking and breaking before the kiln was even 700 degrees.