This attractive repeating Art Deco design originally was made in individual nickel plated bronze pieces. The pieces when bolted together formed a repeating motiff lintel across the top of the interior entrance doorway of the Women’s House of Detention. The Jail was located at 6th Ave behind the present day Jefferson Market Public Library which was originally a courthouse. The New York Women’s House of Detention is believed to have been the world’s only art deco prison. It was designed by Sloan and Robertson in 1931 and opened to the public with a luncheon on March 29, 1932. The courthouse, and jail, the latter which was subsequently opened in 1934…
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Morton school Hammond Indiana George Elmslie, Louis Sullivan Sullivanesque
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…
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Washington Irving school Sullivanesque Pier Capital
Hope to finally finish this Sullivanesque pier capital to-morrow, the clay is getting pretty firm despite being covered with plastic and spritzed with water, so it needs to be finished now. It’s amazing how much time this design takes, probably twice what other models I’ve done have taken, there’s a lot of detail packed in on the surface! I still have 5 of the 8 “squares” along the sides- the 4 on the right and the bottom left one to finish refining and cleaning up and then it’s done. Now that the model is done it is drying out. There is an 11 minute long timelapse video showing the…
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Washington Irving Louis Sullivan Sullivanesque pier capital model progress
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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Washington Irving school, Hammond Indiana W1 pier capital model progress
This complex design will take a while to finish! Here’s where the progress is now.
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Washington Irving school Hammond Indiana pier capital model progress
The model is coming along slowly but surely, below is an updated now 5 minute long time-lapse video of sculpting the original master model.
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Washington Irving school, Hammond Indiana W1 pier capital model
The model is coming along nicely, it’s a pretty complex design that requires a lot of planning, but as I rough out the details in the clay there will be more time-lapse videos and photos.
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Washington Irving school, Hammond Ind W1 pier capital model started
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…
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Two new models in the works, Scoville lunette and Washington Irving school pier capital W-1
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. 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.…
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Louis Sullivan, Elmslie, Sullivanesque terracotta
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…