New York City,
~ I present ~
Lion keystone with fruit Nr 3886
by Randall
The Harlem area was among the last portions of Manhattan to be urbanized, as a result most of the buildings North of Central Park where Harlem begins- were constructed later than those further South- circa 1900-1920. This 20 year period saw a rapid growth and amazing rates of construction of new inexpensive walk-up tenement buildings. By the 1920's there were an estimated 100,000 of these little walk-up buildings, and their average cost to build around 1900 was about $22,000
Most of these tenements were 5 or 6 floor high walkups, and these were rapidly closing in on the remaining vacant lands, farms, mansions and single family homes that existed. The area quickly became a ghetto or slum, landlords walked away in the depression, later, drugs, gangs, crime and worse strangled the neighborhood as the last of the upper middle class fled to other areas.
The cast-stone sculpture is a wall hanging piece and comes with a bar hook in the back and your choice of any of six finishes I offer (see further below for finishes available on your cast) My Old Limestone Grey is the most authentic looking on this and is the default finish.
Casts are available in concrete @ 20% higher cost as shown for installing in a wall, or reduced depth in cast-stone for interior display.
The photos show the reduced depth interior casts. This is a wall hanging sculpture- not designed for freestanding table display.
It really is a charming and very ornate piece with the lion holding the flowers and leaves. The lion with a ring in his mouth is an ancient Roman motif used on all sorts of objects- buildings as well as furnishings.
SIZE: Nominal 20" high by 6-3/4" wide at the bottom, 8-3/4" across the top. They are roughly 8" deep nose to back.
WEIGHT: Approx 28#
These hand sculpted models are created from scratch by Randall in water based clay, and typically take an average of 20-30 hours to set up, layout and sculpt each master model.
When the clay models are finished, they are permanently captured with silicone mold compounds which can pick up even a fingerprint and faithfully transfer it to a cast made in it. From the molds, interior cast-stone as well as concrete sculptures are made available for clients to purchase.
Existing savaged pieces are limited to what happens to be for sale at high prices, often damaged, rarely found in pairs and being typically large in scale (meant to be seen from the street from 5 floors below) they are difficult to display in today's smaller homes and apartments.
Instead of making molds of these pieces, Randall creates new original models based on authentic 19th century and early 20th century Victorian, Art Deco and Louis Sullivan style architectural sculptures. While I do have a small number of older designs directly molded from antique pieces, these are being phased out over time as I create my own original models.
If you are looking for something for the garden or to build into a wall, I offer concrete as a special order item which takes approx 3 weeks. Not all pieces are available in concrete.
All of my sculptures have a heavy wire embedded on the back to hang them on the wall.
By no means! keep in mind- your walls weigh thousands of pounds and support the roof. HOWEVER- do not use plastic or self adhesive picture hangars of any kind, or try to simply put a screw into the thin sheetrock-these will not hold, and are not designed to.
Install your mounting hooks or other hangars into the solid wood STUD inside the wall, these are spaced 16" apart. You should use an anchor rated to hold at least twice the shipping weight of the sculpture.
To show what a sheetrock wall can hold, here is a photo of two shelves I installed on my bedroom wall for original sculptures that I couldn't mount any other way, the brackets are screwed into the wall studs with 3" screws. The weight for the stone and terra-cotta shown-the top shelf; 175# and 125# for the lower shelf- 300# total.
To order- interior casts are $70.00 plus $22.00 shipping via ground to anywhere in the lower 48 states ($94.00 total)
Use this button to order, $70.00 shipping is $22.00 flat rate anywhere is the lower 48 for interior cast-stone.
EXTERIOR CONCRETE
$84 +$27 shipping
