[Sca-cooks] Recent Trip to England

[Elise Fleming]

Kiri wrote:
> Thanks so much for sharing...they are incredible.  My only 
> disappointment was that there didn't seem to be a picture of the 
> finished dragon!!!  He looked so interesting as he was being put together.

He may not even yet be finished.  This was Adrian's fourth attempt at
producing the wax dragon.  It apparently is an on-going project with St.
George as part of the display.  From what he said, he hopes to have it
finished for an event around Christmas.  I'd seen the second incarnation of
the dragon's body on Wednesday when I first went to Hampton Court.  He'd
made one half of the body and spent much of the day sculpting the clay mold
for the second half, trying to mirror what he'd already done.  I left
around 4 pm that day.  When I returned on Easter Sunday he had discarded
that idea since the second half of the body had come out a slightly
different green which was much too noticeable.  The join was also not well
accomplished.  So he was trying another permutation.

One of the photos shows the clay mold where he's impressed the scales and
has pressed in some spinal spikes (not visible until the photo of the
unmolding).  He's finished the belly and is trying to press in a yellow
rectangle of wax on which to suspend the belly as he presses the clay
around it.  We watched as he pressed the clay and then poured another batch
of green wax into the neck opening.  He pressed the opening closed and
rotated the body to spread the wax all around.  It sprang a leak which he
managed to find and seal.  He continued to move the liquid wax around until
he couldn't feel any further movement.  Then he put it down and they all
went to eat their dinner.  He confessed to being a bit afraid to try
unmolding it since he'd never done anything like that before.  

About an hour later they finished eating and a bunch of us gathered to
watch him carefully peel back the clay.  There are two photos of that with
one where he's turned the dragon belly down so we can see the spikes
protruding from the spine.  There's a phote there somewhere of the one leg
that he'd finished.  He thought he might re-make the legs if the green
didn't match the resulting body.  The lovely bumpy claws are made by
putting a snake of warm wax in his hand and closing the fingers around the
wax.  It lumps up between each finger to make some lovely protrusions.

Every day one goes there, something is different!  When Johnnae and
Guillane went on the 8th (a week before Easter) he hadn't yet begun the
dragon.  By Easter Sunday he had played with four variations - no head yet.
He had children take some of the clay and sculpt dragon heads that he said
might give him inspiration for the final result!

Alys Katharine

Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
http://home.netcom.com/~alysk/