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 public school Hammond Indiana W1 pier capital Sullivanesque progress
Making progress on this model, here’s a couple of time-lapse videos so far, newest at the top; 1/26 Uploaded the longer video to-day, the design progress can be especially seen near the end;
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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…
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Master mold for the Elmslie/Sullivanesque James W Scoville building design
With the plaster backing done for the rubber positive I made yesterday, I removed the assembly from the rubber mold. Once the plaster backing on this master positive is soaped up well, I can make the plaster piece-mold of this for pressing the terracotta into, The piece mold will be made in at least 5 pieces, most likely about 8 pieces. It won’t happen very soon as I used up the very last bag of pottery plaster I had on hand and I’ll have to order more along with some other materials and I need some more clay, but I don’t want to order clay when it’s below freezing, so…
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Model from the James W. Scoville, Adler, Sullivan, Elmslie Chicago building
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…
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Louis Sullivan, Elmsley, Schneider James W Scoville building Chicago, progress for 11/17/2018
A timelapse showing some basic rough texturing of the model's background.
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Antique Louis Sullivan “Sullivanesque” panel arrived
My purchased piece of Sullivanesque came today, from the 1936 Thomas A. Edison school, Hammond Indiana. The design is such that it could be situated either way shown in the first 2 photos, but hard to tell which way it was originally meant to be installed and was, it looks good either way it’s rotated, and the impressed numbers on one surface which I remember from the pieces in NYC were always on the TOP side. So which way did this go… it’s easier than it might seem to figure it out even without aphoto of the school to tell- the last photo up close tells the whole story, that…