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Showing posts with label sculpture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sculpture. Show all posts
Thursday, July 04, 2024
Saturday, October 21, 2023
A bronze statue is in Fort William town center, commemorating when a Model T was driven up the tallest peak in the UK in a publicity stunt by Scotland’s first Ford dealer
In a bid to assure customers the Ford brand was of higher superiority to hand-crafted British cars, a Model T went from the foot of Ben Nevis to the peak, and back down. Not on a road. Roughing it, the hard way
Alexander had left the town driving from sea level the five miles to the summit of Ben Nevis which stands at 4,406 feet. The route crosses burns (streams), traverses bogs and ascends the steep trackless rocky hillside. Then as now there is no road or navigable trail.
This feat of man and machine took 5 days in ascent and one working day in descent.
The statue was commissioned by the Powderhall Foundry in Edinburgh, the statue weighs a whopping three tonnes and depicts Mr Alexander Jr behind the wheel of a Ford Model T.
This feat of man and machine took 5 days in ascent and one working day in descent.
The statue was commissioned by the Powderhall Foundry in Edinburgh, the statue weighs a whopping three tonnes and depicts Mr Alexander Jr behind the wheel of a Ford Model T.
This event was celebrated and publicised by the Ford Motor Company for decades, becoming part of the “Mountain Culture” of Ben Nevis.
A 1911 film (available by googling “Motoring over Ben Nevis”) shows the car rattling down the rocky hillside and then becoming stuck in a peat hag beside the half way lochan. Its progress continues when sticks of dynamite are used to demolish the peaty impasse!
Monday, September 25, 2023
Tuesday, August 08, 2023
Monday, July 24, 2023
Friday, June 23, 2023
Friday, April 14, 2023
Monday, April 10, 2023
Sunday, March 26, 2023
Saturday, March 11, 2023
Bultaco was founded by businessman Paco Bultó, but he didn't run the company, he had a commercial business director
Thursday, March 09, 2023
This memorial, located close to the Museum of Dunkerque, is in honor of Georges Guynemer a celebrated French Ace of WWI (54 victories). Guynemer disappeared Sept 11, 1917 in Belgium, it was ordered dismantled by the axis occupation forces.
Flying on different types of Morane-Saulnier, Nieuport, SPAD (VII, SPAD XII gun, SPAD XIII). Notably, he survives eight times after his plane was shot down. He was assigned during his career to No. 3 squadron (MS 3, N 3 then SPA 3), called "Escadrille des Cigognes", the most successful hunting unit of the French wings between 1914 and 1918. His motto is "Face" and his planes are usually painted yellow and baptized "Old Charles"
Tuesday, March 07, 2023
round-abouts on Saint Maarten have cool national icon statues, one is of “Tata the Bus driver,” who took 4 decades of St. Maarten’s children to school, another is of the Traffic Man
While the occasion of opening a new roundabout would cause some to believe that some focus would be placed on traffic alleviation, the life stories of the statue honorees stole the attention of those who attended the ceremony.
Tata was known as the bus driver who made sure there was discipline on his bus, and he transported several persons now holding government function including Commissioner Theo Heyliger.
Another interesting roundabout statue is of Osborne Kruythoff, whose supposedly real job was to clean up seaweed on Great Bay Beach.
If there ever was a Don Quixote knight errant on St. Maarten it was Osborne Kruythoff.
His supposedly real job was to clean up sea-weed on Great Bay Beach whenever such a need arose. This took place very seldom. So at a certain point a unique opportunity presented itself to Osborne to gain fame. St. Maarten had gone from 83 motor vehicles to some 200 or more in the early nineteen sixties.
Osborne, on his own, decided that traffic on the square in front of the Court House needed someone to properly direct it. How he acquired a traffic whistle no one knows.
The crucial moment came when the Lt. Governor saluted Osborne one day, and followed his traffic directions. Osborne felt emboldened and became obsessed with directing traffic, and his whistle became as familiar as a train whistle must have been in former times to those living along the train tracks.
Osborne’s outfit consisted of a brown khaki uniform, a white tropical helmet and a machete used as a baton to direct traffic with. A machete on Saba is still called a cutlass, a throw back to our pirate ancestors. If the car did not obey he would give it a good planass, which he must have learned while cutting cane back when in the Dominican Republic. A planass is the art of hitting someone with the flat part of the machete.
Finally he became too enthusiastic and gave a planass to someone’s new car. Police were called and they dragged him down the alley by the Court House to the Police Station.
Osborne was screaming his head off for the local Judge to come to his rescue. What a pathetic sight he was, his helmet lay smashed on the ground, but the two police officers kept dragging him towards the Police Station kicking and screaming and calling for the Judge. In the end the locals convinced the judge to go to the rescue at the station.
Don Quixote did not surrender easily however. Whether the police liked it or not he continued directing traffic until the number of cars overwhelmed him and he was lost among the crowd along with an entire host of colorful St. Maarten characters.
Many of the Saint Maarten round-abouts have statues in them representing the history of the island. The Dutch settled the southern half of the island in order to exploit the salt deposits found in three large salt pans that provided as much as 400 boat loads of salt per year, unit production of salt stopped in 1949
I only know of one other bus driver that has been immortalized with a public statue, Jackie Gleason's character Ralph, from the tv show The Honeymooners https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-western-hemispheres-biggest-bus.html
Sunday, February 19, 2023
I discovered Michael Ulman's found parts and junkyard scraps made into sculpture in 2007, it's terrific, and he's still making cool stuff!
If you haven't been reading along for more than a couple of years, be sure to go back and look at the other amazing things he's made that I've posted: https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2016/05/been-long-time-but-michael-ulman-is.html because the last time I posted about him was 7 years ago
Sunday, February 12, 2023
Wednesday, January 25, 2023
the galloping American horse with upturned tail that became the Ford Mustang emblem, was created by the Hungarian sculptor Károly Keresztes living in America, working for Ford Design Studio
the proportions of Clark’s logo were too tall to fit in the grille, so Ioccoca had design studio modeler Károly "Charles" Keresztes was told to make a new version for the Mustang II and the eventual production vehicle.
This inspired the founder of the Kaáli Auto-Motor Museum, to get a sculptor to create an unusual work of art from original parts.
The final result reproduces the dynamics of the Keresztes galloping horse with surprising lifelikeness, centered on the heart of the internal combustion engine, the piston, and was mostly made of old Ford Mustang parts during 400 hours of work. The sculptor was János Barta - Vaskalap Metal Art https://www.facebook.com/ironhatmetalart
Notice that the nostrils are wrenches
Monday, January 09, 2023
at the 1986 World Exposition in Vancouver, the central theme was transportation. This was the fair's Highway 86 installation from the artist-architect James Wines and his group SITE (Sculpture In The Environment) celebrating the history of 20th Century air, land and sea transportation.
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