Randall's Urban Architectural Sculptures

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.