Irish Cottage Set

This is the final product of a long series of sculptures and castings I worked on back in 1991. I was fascinated by the whole"David Winter Cottage" phenomenon and got inspired to try it myself. I started out with some small, misshapen houses but I got the hang of it and improved with practice. I would start with a block of wood coated with plasticine and use dental tools to apply detail as well as designing and making custom tools for certain details. I would make a mold out of liquid latex applied in many thin layers and then make a plaster matrix to hold the mold and keep it from distorting in shape when filled with casting material. I would use a special craft plaster that was mixed with finely cut filaments of nylon that would add strength to the finished piece when dry. Finally, I would prime the piece by immersing it in a wash of burnt sienna acrylic and apply a final paint job. Eventually, I got to the point where I could design and make a compound assembly as you can see here, made up of several component parts. Each of the pieces can be removed from the base. Although I never sold many of these things, they made good Xmas presents for people.