NEW 1/24th scale figures

Well, it's taken years to get round to this scale but I've finally got round to it and, do you know, it's such fun to do.

Many years ago Wendy Chalkey, who used to sell 1/24th scale porcelain figures asked me if I'd sculpt a series of character figures for her so that she could cast them and make more realistic men and women than she had in stock. Aprehensive at first I finally got used to the smaller size and loved it. Wendy moved on to other things but I've kept those initial sculptures in a drawer waiting for the time to 'get on with them'.

The time seems right, with more people moving over to the smaller scale - the collections are getting bigger but the space to put them is getting smaller - and the structures, furniture and accessories are getting more available, and very good they are too. But where are the figures?

What's put me off for years is the dressing 'I'll never be able to get my big hands around the tiny bodies' fine for those that were given tiny fingers. Projecting on the fact that 'I'd never be able to do it and I'd be hopeless at it anyway' I took myself in hand and had a go. And do you know it's real fun to do? So much for projecting eh?

Here are the first ones of The Canterbury Tales.

They are The Friar, The Wife of Bath and the Knight. The tallest one is The Friar at three inches high.

So, pleased with the thought that dressing them was, after all, possible and having learned from a mass of mistakes - allways the best way - I crept back late into the workshop to see if it was at all possible to do a Vicorian figure, yes a lady in a draped bustle! Let's not run before we can work eh? And here she is......

I can't wait to teach these and have put a proposal up for 2011 at The Guild School in Castine. Now I wait and see if I've got it right.