Back in August 2023 I was asked by Adrian Lillie of CLW Event Design (the designer along with Charlotte Lloyd Webber behind Christmas at Castle Howard) to make a Selkie for Bamburgh Castle's Christmas Installation.
It is their 3rd year of also decorating Bamburgh Castle for Christmas and being Northumbrian and living only just up the road from this magnificent building which sits right on the spectacular Bamburgh Beach (a full mile of golden sands), I had no hesitation in saying yes please!
There is nothing better than walking that beach on a blustery day to blow the cobwebs away and to be rewarded guilt free with the best fish and chips money can buy at Seahouses which sits at the end of the sandy walk.
Anyway I digress, back to the Selkie- what actually is a Selkie? I had to go and look it up, I felt cheated out of that local myth and to be honest a bit ignorant for not knowing. It is pretty much like a mermaid but it is a seal that sheds it's seal fur when it touches land and becomes a beautiful young woman who lures young men back into the sea with her.
I travelled to York to the CLW Event Design HQ to meet Charlotte and Adrian who discussed the design in more detail and what they hoped it would look like.
The Selkie was to sit in a huge fountain in The Great Hall of Bamburgh Castle, she was to lean over the side and the tail was to look like it was coming out of the water at the back of the fountain. She was to look young, pretty and mischievous.
I left York with a LOT to think about, to be honest I had a sleepless night trying to figure out how was going to go about it.
Obviously the huge and incredibly heavy fountain would not be able to come to me in Northumberland so I had to make a cardboard template of the fountain or rather my husband did so that I could set the position of the arms and get the depth of the torso correct, I didn't know if this was ok until I put her in position, thankfully it worked, thanks to my engineering husband's cardboard wizardry.
So how did I make the Selkie I hear you ask? Firstly I had a lot of props to make in quite a short space of time so if I could use any time saving options I did. The only time saver on this make was the hands. I love the articulated wooden mannequin hands you can buy, you can position them just how you want them and then sculpt over them with an epoxy clay, ta da!
Epoxy clay is both amazing and horrific at the same time. The stuff stinks so working outside is usually best and wearing gloves is a must. The working time is about 1.5 hours which is very pressurised and after that it becomes incredibly hard, it cures in 24 hours and is then rock hard, it can then be sanded, drilled, carved and painted. It is a great way to make a prop that has longevity and is suitable for outdoors without using resins, fibreglass or moulding and casting which is a lengthy and expensive process. The end result using epoxy clay is brilliant but takes an awful lot of sanding to get a nice even, smooth finish and it is pretty expensive.
The arms have an armature of threaded rod which is inserted into a styrofoam body which was shaped using a hotwire, knife, wire brush and sanding paper.
Back to the arms, another secret weapon in my arsenal is tinfoil, lots and lots of the stuff. It is super strong, mouldable, cheap and weatherproof, I love the stuff. I use a long file to bash it into shape around the armature.
Actually the other time saving thing I used was a polystyrene head to get the form very quickly which was then sculpted on to. Polystyrene heads are usually on the small side and look like aliens but stuck onto the styrofoam body with some pu glue I had a very good base to sculpt on to.
The eyes, I can't tell you how tricky it is to get the eyes in straight, to be honest there is often just a hint of a squint in one or two of my sculptures, it is just so difficult.
I once tried shining a light onto the eyes and lining up the reflected light to the same position in each eye, unfortunately I didn't account for the fact that each glass eye is handmade separately and therefore is not identical, I had to gouge the eyes back out and try again.
So I usually put the eyes in first and build up the facial features afterwards. The face of the Selkie was going very sadly wrong, I tried to add dimples for the mischievous look but the end result had a very striking resemblance to Smeagol. The aquatic beast nearly had me beat but thankfully an hour spent with a grinder and diamond cutting disc knocked things into shape and I was able to re sculpt part of the face.
Everything got a really good sanding at this point, working through the different grades of grit until it had a lovely smooth finish, it had to look like skin so there wasn't really an option to skip this part.
Next the hair was added, I use a combination of wire, tinfoil and worbla ( sheets that are mouldable with heat, then set firm), then self hardening clay over the top but epoxy clay at any points that need extra strength.
Now was the fun part and the bit I like best and that was sculpting the seal form, I much prefer sculpting animals to humans. I find it is so much more forgiving, especially once the fur is added and coloured, the faux taxidermy technique I've perfected over the last couple of years basically involves shredding fabric and layering it so it appears to be growing from the animal rather than faux fur stuck on which makes everything look like a cuddly toy taking away from the realism. Whiskers are added by drilling tiny holes and gluing in nylon thread.
Everything about adding the fur is incredibly laborious just so labour intensive. I always begin to wonder why I do this at this stage, working in wet clay (like a proper sculptor would) is just so much easier by a mile but this is what I have found myself doing, I do enjoy the challenge of it though and love that the end result gets to be seen by so many people and in the most amazing venues.
She was then painted using transparent acrylic inks on the fur as it absorbs into the fibres of the fabric giving a much more naturalistic result. When the faux taxidermy is painted it always transforms the prop completely, I see the animal come alive in front of my eyes. I surround myself with really good reference photos throughout the process and I always have to paint in natural light. I have tried all sorts of artificial lighting but it's just not the same.
The tail has a thick metal plate at the bottom that acts as a counterbalance stopping it from toppling over. I struggled a bit with the look of the tail, I had wanted to try to make an aesthetically pleasing sculptural form but this approach just didn't have enough realism In the end it is neither realistic nor a pleasing form but I didn't have time to redo it. In total the Selkie took about 15 days from start to finish, I often underestimate how long a project will take and this was one of those times but I was pretty pleased with the end result.
Here she is sitting on my dining room table ready for her adventure to Bamburgh to see if she can lure any young unsuspecting men into the sea with her, if so not to worry I'm sure the ghost of Grace Darling will come to the rescue and fish them out.