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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Sculpture of the week (November 19th, 2019)
Sullivanesque panel, after historic artifacts once on the James W Scoville building, Chicago. I am excited to offer this interesting Sullivanesque 1884 design after the artifacts that were connected to Adler & Sullivan, George Elmslie, Kristian Schneider, and once installed on the James W Scoville building in Chicago. Those involved in creating the original 1884 Chicago design are said to have included; Dankmar Adler Louis Sullivan George Grant Elmslie Kristian Schneider Significance: The James W. Scoville factory building, designed by Adler & Sullivan contains three different designs belonging to the transitional period (1880 and 1890) of Louis Sullivan’s architectural ornament. This structure was the best and most ornamental of all…
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James W Scoville building terracotta
This James W Scoville building Elmslie “Sullivanesque” sculpture is now out of the kiln, it is still about 200 degrees and had to be handled with gloves, it turned out perfect! One can see the color change in photos from the previous dry/unfired state and now that it’s been fired to a little over 2,079 degrees, actually cone 2 tipped because I added a 15 minute “hold” at the set temperature, but because of the “heat work” it went a little higher, but the result is better and the color is nice and even top to bottom, whereas in the past the very bottom of large pieces like this would…
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The Jamws W Scoville Elmslie Sullivanesque panel kiln firing
After 4 weeks of drying I placed the pressed clay Chicago James Scoville building “Sullivanesque” panel in the kiln and turned ‘er on. I changed the program on the controller slightly for this piece by bumping the temperature up and adding 10 minutes soak time to when the kiln reaches that temperature. About 37 hours from now the kiln will shut off and take half a day to cool down before I see what I get. Meanwhile, here it is sitting in the kiln when I turned it on. The light yellow colored deals touching the back of the panel are shelf posts and I placed them on both front…
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James W Scoville, George Elmsley/Sullivanesque design first pressed clay
The first hand-pressed clay sculpture is finished and drying now before it can be kiln fired. Once this is fired in the kiln I will have an exact size and weight and a firm price for these signed, numbered and dated works reproducing this historic George Grant Elmslie/Louis Sullivan 1884 Chicago design featuring a styled webbed lotus. The design is an early work by these men and it dates to the foundation of what has become known as the “Sullivanesque” style of architectural ornament. The James W Scoville building was demolished in the 1970s, many of the original artifacts were salvaged, most are in private collections while a few…
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First pressing of the James Scoville “Sullivanesque” terracotta panel
I pressed the first LS2 panel today, it took 60 pounds of clay, the sculpture will need to firm up a little and dry a little before I can finish cleaning up and refining the surface details. It takes about 2- 3 weeks of slow, careful drying of pressed clay sculptures of this size before they can be kiln fired. The firing process in an electric kiln takes approximately 36 hours and the high quality clay I use is fired to what is known as “Cone 1”- about 2,100 degrees F which vitrifies it nicely to become harder and less porous than standard hard bricks are. Once the sculpture was…
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George Elmslie/Scoville building design mold ready
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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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…