Regular readers know exactly what I’m doing.
I’m pouring liquid clay to make dolls, sculptures, ornaments and all the rest of the things I have made for over thirty one years in porcelain.
There’s a lot to pour. There are fifty four individual moulds to be poured.
, here they are.
There are not fifty four individual items to come out of them. Many of the items are made up of several pieces of porcelain, strung together. The horse, for example, with which I have started because it is the most difficult and most likely to need tweeking, uses seven moulds, though each mould may have multiple pieces of porcelain in it. One mould is for the lower limbs, four of them, and one for the upper limbs, four of them. The smallest horse mould is for the ears, I don’t know if I’ve made them big enough. I have thrown away three heads so far.
The horse is using vast amounts of porcelain slip, which is hard to come by and expensive, because it’s imported. The brand I use comprises English China Clay dug up, shipped across the pond, enriched with a couple of teaspoons of chemicals that occur naturally in America. Then vast quantities of tap water are added, the whole thing is mixed and put into gallon jars and then shipped across the pond to dealers who add a lot of money because they have large storage shelves.
The cost of a gallon is enough to make you think diamonds are cheap. I will later, if any horses go all the way through all the processes, work out how much they should cost, allowing for the cost of the porcelain slip, the cost of firing an electric kiln for several hours, the cost of wire to make the stringing hooks, stringing resin, manes and tails and a skilled craftsman working for £10 an hour.
If I did it properly I’d add the cost of the show table, transport to the show and the two cups of tea I will drink over the weekend.
Realistically the horses should cost about £150 each but they’re probably going to be £50 or less, depending on what they look like, supposing any get finished.
And you could say the same for many of the Miniatura artisans, who are a load of artists and not good at commercial stuff. Over the fifteen years or so that I interviewed professional miniaturists for magazines, the only ones making money were importers and people who had contacts in parts of the world where labour was cheaper than here and making miniatures was considered ladylike work compared to standing up to your knees in a paddy field.
But there are very few of them at Miniatura, which is by and small a hall full of original artists. If it were in one scale it would be inundated with collectors from round the world. At one point when it got up to three hundred stands, it was.
Happily the hobby shrunk again, which suits it much better. There are still shows in very international venues with high prices and many dealers.
And there’s Miniatura, just over 100 stands of things miniaturists need and a load of artists.
And maybe, even a few articulated horses.
We shall see.
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Well, I’ll see first, in a couple of weeks and if they’re any good, I’ll show you.