on a historic music hall in
New York City,
~ I present ~
Webster Hall Griffin Panel Nr Webster
Cast by Randall
The original panel is one of a few extant on a landmark historic 1886 building known as Webster Hall. Located at 125 East 11th St by 4th Ave NYC
Webster Hall was designed by renowned architect Charles Rentz and quickly became the countrys first modern nightclub. It was a place where one could witness figures such as Emma Goldman herald the cause of free love and birth control on one night and, on the next night, see the refined atmosphere and grace of a society function celebrating New Yorks elite. Margaret Sanger led strikers to the building in 1912. Other patrons from the club's early years include painters Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Stella.
During Prohibition, the theme of the balls held within the hall moved from the social and political trends to the hedonistic attitude of the speakeasy. Local politicians and police were said to turn a blind eye to the merrymakers who attended, despite, or perhaps because of, whispers that the venue was owned by the infamous mobster Al Capone. Appropriately, prohibition's repeal was the cause for one of Webster Hall's biggest celebrations, "The Return of John Barleycorn."
Using photos of the mirrored originals, used them as a visual reference to create my version of the design in a new reduced size model. The original panels are 32" wide, I decided to make my model 24" wide.
Below: photos of the building, and the original panel taken at my request by a very nice local photographer, this fellow not only does excellent photography, it seems I may have sparked his interest in photographing these ornaments he hadn't really noticed before. Thanks to GammaBlog, without his photos this model would not have been created.
Please note that these photos are courtesy of and (C) GammaBlog - Photos, Street Art, Architecture and Politics from the heart of the East Village, NYC.GammaBlog's web site GammaBlog's flickr photo sets
Webster Hall's original spandrel panel is shown in a photograph on page 70 in the book entitled; Architectural Sculpture in New York City (C) 1975 by Stephen M Jacoby, Dover books 0-486-23120-8
Note that the terracotta is ONLY available in brick red and ONLY on a limited selection- the designs in the TERRACOTTA category, not to be confused with the red terracotta FINISH! which is on cast-stone only.
Prices include shipping and are shown on each sculpture on the CART PAGES.
I use FEDEX ground service for all shipments in the lower 48 states. I do not ship outside the USA.
If you are looking for something for the garden or to build into a wall, I offer a growing number of hand-pressed, kiln fired red terracotta works. for many reasons, concrete is no longer available.
All of my interior sculptures have a heavy wire embedded on the back to hang them on the wall.
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 master 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 a growing number of kiln fired terracotta 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.
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.
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Prices Revised Dec 24th, 2013
