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The Prospector (There be gold in them thar teeth)
This was the main piece I wanted done for the World Expo at Stresa. I originally had the idea when I needed to get one of my gold fillings replaced, I could do a large scale figure amongst a landscape of giant teeth. Not the mouth of some giant he had killed, that had been done before, this would be an unnatural landscape where the brave would venture forth to in the quest for gold, struggling across the slippery terrain, ever alert for whatever foul beasts stalk this strange landscape. So when I had the new filling put in I asked the dentist for the casting of my mouth they had used to make the new filling and set to work on the base. I cast a block of plaster the same dimensions as the wooden plinth, using a piece of foam to create the dip at the front to match the groove in the wood. Then I split the cast of the teeth and added them to the base, using milliput to smooth them in. The axe was removed from the right hand and replaced by a leather strap to hold the filling he had just extracted. It seems I'd actually worn a hole in it with many years chewing so that proved a convenient method of attachment. Meanwhile the haft was pinned back to the axe head which had a claw added to the back, all the better to prise the gold from the teeth. As a last touch I decided to add another gold filling to one of the teeth at the front of the base, after 3 attempts I used gold leaf to match the metallic shine of the real filling.
Posted: 29 Jul 2014
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