Randall’s Lost Web log

A fellow in Nashville from whom I bought a number of pieces of 1856 cast iron that he had collected during demolition of the Morgan-Reeves bldg in the 1970’s sent a note last December saying he found a few odd left over fragments of iron which probably went to or with some of what I purchased, and did I want them?
Of course I said please send, and so Larry bless his preservation minded heart sent them via mail, but the package never arrived.
A disapointment for sure, because the small corinthian capital I have from him is missing a few fragements and it woulkd have been nice to complete it.
Well, amazing as it seems, six MONTHS later Larry gets the damaged package back as undeliverable!

Re-packaged and sent again it finally arrived!
The 3 pieces were well wrapped and I found one of the pieces goes to one of the ground floor capitals I have for which I had to make a wood mock-up for because the leaves were removed off the original columns which probably weighed a couple thousand pounds!

So now the empty spot on the lower right will have it’s leaf as soon as it’s cleaned up and oiled.

Another of the pieces is a broken-off fragment of one of the tiny acanthus leaves for the other capital, (below) so I am happy to have at least that with which to repair it with. The capital still has one broken leaf which is missing the broken portion, but it’s mostly complete and is the only surviving interior capital- the rest were scrapped by demolition men who threw them on the truck one evening after Larry had previously paid for salvage rights. He came back and these were gone, sold for maybe a penny a pound…
The capital is shown before cleaning and oiling, it is easy to see how fragile the leaves are;

Anyway, kudos to Larry for everything, and I wish him well in his future endeavors!

It looks like I will be modelling a large Sullivanesque panel for a client in Chicago, 18″ x 36 but in a vertical format.

I look forward to working with the client’s masons and landscaping contractor to ensure their client has something unique, inspiring and interesting!

There’s a number of salvaged pieces around when they are available, but of course finding the size, design and configuration one wants for a project is almost impossible, especially if the project involves the need for several of the same design, mirrored pairs and so forth.

The salvaged pieces of course come with a price-tag, mostly due to their being antiques, one-of-a-kind and other intrinsic values such as as sentiments due to where they originated from, or by whom they were made.

The prices on salvaged pieces are now at the fine-art level, where I can offer competitive prices on a custom model designed the way the clients wants, one does not have to settle for “whats available” and paying premium dollars for it no matter what condition it might be in.

Make no mistake, custom models are not for the client hoping to duplicate something they have for $100 or $200. The average set up, design and modelling of a sculpture takes around 20 to 30 hours. This depends on many factors of course and some will be less, while others will take more.

As such, and due to mold material costs, custom modelling starts at $1,250 this includes all materials for the model, and up to 30 hours of setup and modelling time. Most models come under that 30 hours.
Change-orders, alterations or additional time modelling past 30 hours is $60 per hour.

I do not charge for the design/consultation time, and this is not part of the 30 hours.

Once the model is approved and finished, there is phase 2; the mold making, this is charged on a 50% basis for time and materials as I retain all molds and rights to the designs produced in my studio.

The exception is for designs of a personalized nature which I simply cannot use, i.e. a family crest, or if the design is such I feel it has no use to me and doesn’t “fit” my line.
Then the client pays the full cost for time/materials but the mold is destroyed or stored for the client for subsequent casts.

Casts are generally priced based on similar sized/weight/complexity pieces I produce, and will vary somewhat depending on material, finish etc.

Shipping is FedEx ground, or via freight truck for heavier pieces/quantities.
Shipping several sculptures crated on a pallet via truck can be cheaper than shipping several boxes via FedEx, the break-even point is around 500#. Truck shipments are FOB via a loading dock here to your business, loading doc or residence.
Truck shipment pickups are arranged and paid for to the trucking agent directly by the client providing them with the information I provide the client when the shipment is ready- weight, size, crated/palletized, class etc.

Sample of a small Elmslie block that was sold at auction recently, notice the “estimate” for final price for this rather plain design, this is probably the most simplistic design I’ve seen but it serves to demonstrait how insane the prices on these pieces have become- the auction houses’ estimate is right about what I would charge to custom model this design.

I had this attractive brass name plate made up for the base of the eagle, now mounted on it for a finishing touch it looks real classy.

Now that I brought back my sculptures which were on exhibit at the Blanden Fine Arts Museum, they would be available.
The new updated technique to obtain the buff yellow finish I experimented with on a couple of the sculptures for this exhibit turned out extremely well and uses mostly tints in the casting material rather than applied paints. I think I will be using this technique as a replacement since it worked so well!

The red terra cotta finish is much harder to find a tint replacement for as red pigments turn pink when added to the mixture. However, since I do plan to buy a large ceramic kiln and add a premium hand finished fired terra cotta line, the red terra cotta finish would instead be available in a kiln fired genuine terra cotta version, but I am waiting for the overall economy to pick up again and see if there’s an interest in this before investing a few thousand dollars on the kiln and setup.

New client Doreen will be receiving 2 of my Art Deco Folies panels shortly and is excited about using them as soon as her fire damaged home is rebuilt and she has the wall to hang them.

The panel has proven popular and I may also make a second model of this but smaller so as to have it in 2 sizes.

I expect sometime this summer when I decide what models to add, I will be ordering more clay and starting work on a few new designs. I’m sure at least a couple will be Art Deco. Still, I’d sure like to make something really big that can go in a garden. I was looking at the pair of winged lions on a landmark Louis Sullivan bank, one of which was destroyed by a drunk who knocked it off the pedistal. Those are around 5 feet tall but I have measurements and lots of photos.

A Long Island antique shop had this grotesque along with the other one I bought a month or so ago, as well as several other pieces;

Obviously these two came from the same building, their modelling is unusually deep. They wanted $350 for the other grotesque which I wound up buying, and $275 for this one, though this store is really difficult to get a reply out of and while waiting on them earlier this year to reply with the shipping cost details, I wound up buying the large eagle instead.
The $350 piece they had a PayPal “Buy now” button and the price, the rest didn’t.

So now months I take a look and this other piece is still there and I wound up buying it, should be here soon.
A slight rust stain in the top left area suggests this was over one of two windows per floor which had a fire escape balcony and ladder serving them.
The rust would have originated from one of the iron balcony supports directly above it.

The others they have are carved sandstone and some of those have a $2500 price on them which is pretty insane! Besides the overprices on those the quality of the carving on them really stinks, they look like a carving student’s first pieces and for all I know they really were lol. It’s not that they were “ugly” or anything, just that the faces on them were so poorly and amateurishly done that it’s pretty obvious the person who carved them was not good with faces and probably should have stuck to leaves, vines and other designs.

Shortly, I will retrieve some of the sculptures which have been on exhibit at the Blanden Museum since mid- January, my exhibit has been there for almost 6 months which has been an extraordinary educational opportunity for patrons of the museum to see fine art that is vastly different than they expected to see today at a museum- new works of Victorian architectural
sculptures.
I also had the opportunity to do a presentation early on and to bring in additional antique display pieces to show and talk about that day.
Besides the slide-show, I brought in an 1856 cast-iron corinthian capital, a terra cotta capital, and a few others.
My goal was not selling the works as much as using the opportunity to educate the public about these anonymously produced artworks on building facades. Having my work there for 6 months when it was originally to be for only 3 months was just fantastic.

Of course my professor at Iowa Central Community College takes the credit for making this possible via her contacts, yet another example of how a university fine arts program can benefit the community, patrons and visitors, a museum, and the artist.

As the director said;

Your sculptures are exceptionally interesting, well-designed and your prices extremely reasonable.

Now that I have the mobile base made for the eagle, it only needs some clean-up and mounting the casters then lacquer and it’s finished this weekend.

I bought a set of 4 casters from Grizzley industrial for $34, they turned out to be very industrial indeed! I was amazed at how substantially made they were, and rated for 550# each- way more than this needs. I’ve had good value from them on everything I’ve purchased except their own brand of air stapler I use for my shipping crates, from the start it tended to misfire maybe every 5th staple. Now that the platform is finished, the first photo shows the eagle suspended by my studio hoist and ready to lower into position on top of the platform

And a closer view of the platform later

Further down the page I detailed buying 2 of these keystones which were once MINE- at auction, well, I had a Philly UPS Store pick them up, pack and ship them; $285 there for those fees and UPS shipping charges, I specifically said I wanted them double boxed and $400 additional insurance each since I paid $720 for them.

Well they arrived yesterday- single boxed with the most incompetant bullshit packing Ive ever seen in my life, a CHILD could have done better than these asswipes!
Here’s just one photo of the damage to one of them, keep in mind this was in almost mint condition when it was picked up- having just a tiny minor chip here and there consistant with the age;

And here’s how this UPS store “PACKS” a 100 year old 75 pound sculpture, with a wrap of bubble wrap, about a baggie’s worth of peanuts, a couple of book mailer boxes and a bunch of those plastic express-mail envelopes thrown in like they were discards or something and the employee used this box for the trash can.

What kind of fucking morons get a job packing fragile shipments?? this is how they pack two antiques that I just filed a $1,009 damage claim for;

Just so folks know, this was a “pack” job by a UPS store in Philly, so if anyone reading this is near there and is considering using THIS store for packing or shipping your items, you’d do well to RUN as fast as you can. Ive had excellent results with other UPS stores, the others packed extremely well and that includes the 300# goat medallion, the last one before this on Long Island was packed so well I sent them an email about how well it was done.

So now we come to what to do about the DAMAGE, well, these can’t be “repaired” you dont “repair” a 100 year old antique, you restore it, in this case a fine-art restoration firm would be who would do something like that, but even then it will never be as it was and any restorations will over time probably shrink, fade or otherwise deteriorate because for the most part they would use a combination of an epoxy adhesive/filler material, textured and painted to match.
That means it can’t go out in the weather either.

Since these are terra cotta there’s no way to restore them with new moist clay and refire them, the color and texture would never be the same and the moist clay shrinks 10% so it won’t stick in any case.
The broken chunks are also fragmented into fines, so they can’t simply be “glued on”.
Sending something like this to a fine art restoration firm would probably cost $200 in shipping costs there and back alone- each, and then their fees would not be cheap!

I saw an estimate to repair a terra cotta griffin that was hit by a car in Savannah, it was well over $50,000.

From the savannahNOW paper;

The City Council in January approved a $58,000 contract for the lion’s restoration.

… an architectural restorer, has been hired by the city of Savannah to rebuild the 19th century winged lion to create a mold. From that, he will create a new lion of fiberglass-reinforced concrete. In about three months, the new statue should be gracing the fountain at Bay and Drayton streets.

Here’s how you get something like this home and on the porch from the loading dock 5 blocks away where it was delivered- using a dolly!

I was browsing an East Coast live auction firm’s upcoming auction a couple of weeks ago when I happened to see this keystone, actually a pair of them.
These were actually mine and they came from 522-524 East 12th st. by Ave A.

I was happy to get a bid in and won the lot for $600, actually $720 with the 20% premium added in

http://urbansculptures.com/buildingphotos/Plate-30-b.html

From a 1921 ad by Midland Terra Cotta, photo detail showing workers pressing clay into plaster molds.

I was happy to find this massive terra cotta eagle, 1 of 4 salvaged from a Chicago building demolished in the 1980’s
I suspect the 4 were sitting in someone’s garden or something and they passed away, and all 4 were sold to Urban Remains.

The eagle is 44″ tall and about that wide, and 27″ deep approximately, and I estimated around 400 pounds.

It’s arrival should be in about 3 weeks via truck. It was a $4,000 purchase plus the shipping, but worth the money.

More photos when it’s actually here.