The new mold for pressing terracotta from is finally dry, it took 2 weeks in front on a box fan on high. The main base piece weighs 90#, the other 6 sections probably adds another 50# to that. George Elmslie and Dankmar Adler’s 1884 Chicagoan James Scoville building “Sullivanesque” design is sure to be stunning in kiln fired red terracotta. There are a few originals out there, at least one is sitting in a Virginia museum, and others as well as other designs from the same building have been spotted on already sold live-auction sites after having sold for an insane $5,000- $15,000, but when people have NO lower cost…
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James Scoville Elmslie 1884 “Sullivanesque” mold
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…
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Elmslie Sullivanesque James Scoville building artifact update.
Now that I have the materials needed, I’ll be making the mold required to produce this historic model in hand-pressed kiln fired red terracotta this weekend, it will be a few weeks before the first one can be produced.
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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…