Randall's Urban Architectural Sculptures

I guess I can say I am re-reading a two vol set of books I read around 20 years ago; “Northward over the great ice” by Peary. It is interesting to re-read it and gain a different perspective of this 1894 work.
I had a set that was signed by Peary himself but it was damaged by the fire sprinkler flood in Brooklyn, but I found several copies around for sale, it’s also been reprinted new but I wanted the original set.

I picked up Vol 2 really cheap a few weeks ago to read as the set in good condition runs around $100, but I just found a decent set for $60 so I bought that.

Peary was a good writer, you feel like you are there as you read. Peary detailed the weather a lot on his exploration of Greenland, and it’s interesting to note his log of the weather on one 3 day period where he said it was -50 to -60 F with an average wind of 48 MPH, he didn’t have a wind-chill chart back then as it didn’t exist, I looked up the numbers however and it was roughly about 90 degrees below zero.
Tragically his subsequent entry on that detailed looking outside the tent in the morning and finding his dogs’ legs and tails frozen in the snow and that 2 had frozen to death.

He also mentioned a curious malady several times, referring to the Eskimo term “Piblickto,” curious, I looked it up as it sounded a lot like rabies from his description of how both dogs and the Eskimo’s would be affected by this “arctic madness” and go berzerk, I discovered it was actually vitamin A poisoning!
Peary didn’t know it, but according to what I read from modern medicine- Polar bear and other Arctic animal’s livers and other organs have high amounts of vitamin A in them, Polar bear especially- enough to be toxic if consumed!
So since Peary detailed killing about 2 dozen walrus and more for winter meat, it makes sense that he would have fed the internals to the dogs, probably thinking the organs were rich in nutrients (they would be) and good for the hard working dogs pulling the sledges. What he didn’t know was, it was not a disease at all- he was slowly poisoning the dogs with high amounts of vitamin A, and some of his entries mention 3 dogs affected one day, 2 another, and so on, and that the affected dogs would go into a rage- attacking all the others in a frenzy untill they were shot.

Peary started out on one of his explorations in that book with about 90 dogs and returned with just one.

… the night to warm up the boys and keep up their spirits. The straining and flapping of the tent, the deafening roar of the wind, the devilish hissing of the drift, the howling and screaming of the poor dogs, made a pandemonium never to be forgotten. One consoling feature was the fact that, owing to the quality and construction of our fur clothing, no one of the party suffered severely from the cold while in the tent. Personally, though without sleeping-bag or any other covering beyond my deerskin travelling garments, I was entirely warm and comfortable throughout the storm. Early on Friday morning, March 23d, the wind began to subside, and at seven A.M.

I was out looking upon a scene that made me sick at heart. Half my dogs were frozen fast in the snow, some by the legs, some by the tails, and some by both. Two were dead, and all were in a most pitiable condition, their fur a mass of ice and snow driven into it by the pitiless wind. Several had freed themselves and had destroyed the double sleeping-bag and many of the harnesses which had been blown off the tripods. Baldwin’s anemometer, barograph, and thermograph, which, as the result of his ingenuity and perseverance, had kept on recording throughout the storm, showed that for thirty-four hours the average wind velocity had been over forty-eight miles per hour, and the average temperature about —50° F., with a minimum of over — 60° F.

When these figures are considered in connection with our elevation of some five thousand feet, the unobstructed sweep of the wind, and the well- known fact that ice-cap temperatures accompanied by wind are much more trying to animal life than the same temperatures at sea-level, it is believed that the judgment will be that this storm beats the record as the most severe ever experienced by any arctic party.

I decided that it was not advisable to attempt to proceed any farther this season. We were now 128 miles from the lodge. As to the condition of my party, one was now entirely out of the race with frosted feet, and must return to the lodge. Another was not entirely recovered from an attack of cramps at the last camp, and I feared another storm would bring them on again. The third had both heels and great toes frost-bitten, and was having daily attacks of bleeding from the nose. All, however, showed true grit, and were willing to push on. But the crushing blow was the existence in my pack of the dreaded and incurable piblockto, induced by the extreme exposure of the past four weeks, and which, with continued work and exposure, might easily reduce my pack to half its present number, or even exterminate it entirely. Another serious feature of the case was the lateness of the season. Instead of being at Independence Bay on the 1st of April, as I had planned.

Always like this bronze tablet in Madison Square Park, it dates to 1857 and is extremely well done.
Not obvious from the photo but a number of areas of the figures were modelled in the full-round and project out from the background qite a bit.

Photo courtesy of wallyg http://flickr.com/photos/wallyg/2563295902/

In an 1898 book entitled King’s photographic handbook of New York I found this photo of the Columbia College of Pharmacy building from which a couple of cornice lions I purchased around 1980 came from.

So after all these years this is the first decent photo of the building I have seen other that one a few years ago which showed the building from some distance away in the background.

King’s handbook was a good book, it shows downtown Manhattan well- before the building boom in the teens and 20′s.
Most of the buildings shown in that area are long gone.

The model is pretty much done except for some cleaning up as it dries,

The sales page for her is here;

store

As I mentioned previously, two of the original five tenements still exist, Nr’s 715 and 717 which can be seen below.

The angel panel design used for my latest model Nr. 713-R came from under two windows on the top floor, the two that are extant are obscured in the photo by the fire escape balcony.
The original sheet metal cornices on both buildings are gone, and the ground floor of 715 has been extensively altered. Only the ground floor of 717 is reasonably intact and features 3 stone figural keystones, chances are all five buildings had the same ground floor facade and keystones that 717 has.

The angel panel model is amost finished, as she dries out and firms up I’ll be cleaning it up and refining it better.

Now that summer is here, well, almost… are we going to begrudge one week early?
I am preparing space as well as soon to install the electrical connections for a large ceramic kiln.
Still debating over a couple of models of oval Olympic kilns, one is around $2,000 the other is around $2,500. The larger model of course takes more juice and I may not need one as large, OTH it would be nice to have the capacity in case.

Sometime this summer it will be ordered, the goal is to completely replace concrete as a casting material for new brick construction or garden display. I just completed a large run of a variety of sculptures for a flurry of clients lately; including one client whose new brick home is now sporting nine of my Nr 294-G lady keystones in concrete. How nice it would have been to be able to furnish fired terra cotta for those keystones.

The advantages over concrete are great, however, the clay can’t be formed in the rubber molds- they must be plaster molds and with a minimal amount of undercuts. The clay versions would require at least a certain amount of time hand detailing each one, but they would be made exactly the same way they were in the 1890′s though a bit lighter.

I have samples of a very attractive, dense, very close to the original antiques in color- red clay. When fired to cone 1 it’s close! as this clay darkens a little with each hotter cone, I feel cone 2 would get the color extremely close. The clay turns a brown tone with hotter cones still and brown is not the color I desire, so the color I need to obtain will be limited to a narrow temperature range and that will take some test firings to work out for getting the pieces consistant.

Pricing will depend on many issues of course.

These will be for clients who demand the best and want authentic- the ultimate in authenticity, materials, and unique.
A certain amount of individual hand modelling will need to be done on each one- making each more unique, while on some models a considerable amount of hand detailing will be required.

Terra cotta also allows for the application of a rainbow of glazes, although a matt white glaze was the most common, therefore a white crackle glaze would be stunning and look the most real.

I’m reading an 1895 photo book by Moses King as I mentioned, and happened to find a photo of the Windsor Hotel- 44th to 45th street 5th ave, on a whim I decided to google map some of the photos I sew in the book to do a then and now in my head to see what changed.

I knew the hotel was long gone, but what interested me was a pencilled-in notation on the photo that the hotel was destroyed by fire just 4 years after that book was printed- 1899.
So I did a NY Times archive search and there in print was the whole story with the headlines:

“Windsor Hotel lies in ashes, fourteen persons known to have lost their lives, 52 injured, some fatally. Three- score missing, their bodies probably in the ruins, many leap to death. Fire started by smoker’s match tossed into lace window curtain”

So I’m reading these articles and all the side stories like the couple whose wills each left their property to the other but BOTH died in the fire, and about how only the two big metal lamps on the entrance were about all that was left, and that 700 men combed the wreckage looking for valuables, bodies etc. The NY Times back then, I guess they all did, graphically described bones found, their condition, and went on to describe how the persons they belonged to were crushed up and mangled by the falling timbers, brick and so on and likely would never be identified.

So I go look what’s there today, and there’s a pretty ordinary, non descript midtown office building, one you’d pass a hundred times and hardly give notice to, yet a little over 100 years ago there was this big fire and story, and how it all started with a guy who carelessly tossed a lighted match out the window on St Patrick’s day while a parade went past his window outside, but the match wound up igniting the lace curtain.

Contemporary view

A bland view of the lower floors;

In 1895

6-6-08

Ok, I quit for tonight.
As all the shaving and altering on the face and hair wound up making the face appear un-centered between the wings, so I cut the entire face/head off and moved it to the left about 1/2″ to center it better, and at the same time tilted it forward a little at the top and turned it to her left a little more as well.
I decided the eyes were not so much too close, as much as they seemed too small, so I moved them apart a little more and enlarged the left eye to see how it looks

I also worked a bit on the wings to further direct/angle the feathers closer on the bottom to where they should be going.

In the 1900′s era especially, parapet facade wall cornices frequently were adorned with lion head masks along their length. Lions were very popular motifs also used in cartouches and other forms on the facade.

Here is another recent purchase from an antique store in Pennsylvania, a very nicely modelled yellow terra cotta with a grey matt glaze cornice lion. The black is from coal soot. He came from Ohio, my guess is downtown Cincinatti. This one which is around 15″ high was $1,100 but well worth the price.

Lions, especially holding a ring in their mouth from which frequently hangs a tassel or cornucopia-like form composed of fruit and leaves dates back to ancient Roman architecture.
On some buildings such as theaters that have a marquee, lions were often used in the facade to give the appearance of holding the marquee up with chain, cable or rods held in their mouth or from the ubiquitous mouth ring.

In the same way owl sculptures were used on libraries and schools quite often due to the association with being wise or educated, the lion was symbolic of strength, courage, fidelity and nobility, and he was used frequently in pairs or paired with another animal such as a unicorn in monuments, memorials, shields, seals, charters and cartouches of all kinds, company logos and trademarks, so it is of no surprise he found his way ornamentally onto facades of buildings.

The lion-with-ring motif is still popular today and found on drawer and cabinet pulls, door knockers, curtain rings and so forth.