Recreated Corbridge moulds- Taranis and Vulcan

[Caballo]

A while ago I was lucky enough to get a plaster moulding from this mould found at Corbridge.


It is identified as Taranis (page 165 Gods and Thunderbolts, De La Bedoyere) , and for several years has sat above my desk in a brownish overall colour. I also got a similar mould of Vulcan, I believe also from Corbridge.

I have been meaning for a long time to try and recreate their original apprearance in colour, so here they are. Of course the colour is entirely guesswork, but painting reveals a number of details.

The Taranis figure is holding a club, and the paint now makes clear that he is wearing a Montefortino helmet. The shield has some strange details- dot/ circle decorations and a semicircle or fold from top to bottom. Any ideas what these could be? He wears a fur under garment with a tunic or cloak on top. The overall feel is quite auxillary....

I've not looked at painting them in a sophisticated way- both because the modelling is not sophisticated and also because I'm not that great a painter!

Anyway, I hope this helps bring these rather overlooked figures to life.

Cheers
Caballo

Taranis

Vulcan

[John Conyard]

They really are beautiful.

You are a very lucky man.

[Vitruvius]

Ave,
I agree with John...Beautiful. I wonder if with the proper care, metal castings of the figures and the other items on them could be made to be welded or bolted on to a musculata? Let me know what you think, please,
All the best, and Salve,
Larry Mager a.k.a Vitruvius

[Caballo]

Good question- the moulding is made of plaster of paris so is very fragile- I certainly could not take these to an event.
Personally, I don't believe these were for a musculata- rather a wall decoration for a shrine, or perhaps a clay "applique" as decoration for pottery.

Cheers

Caballo

[Crispvs]

As a child I too had a plaster cast from the Taranis mould, which is still sitting proudly in the centre of a bookshelf at my father's house. My casting had a pale green wash over it which emphasised much of the detail. It would not have occurred to me to paint it as you have, probably because I have known it a certain way for most of my life, but I think you are right that the ancients probably would have painted it and I think your paint-jobs are actually quite good. As to their function, I have sometimes wondered if they might be votive figures of some sort.

Interesting to see. I didn't think they were still selling castings from these moulds thanks to fears that the moulds themselves might starts to be damaged.

Crispvs

[Cunicula]

If they are,they will have remoulded them - you wouldn't normally take more than one mould from an original object. What I do if I know I'm likely to need repeat castings of an object is to keep the first cast (a good practice anyway) and use that to make new moulds - moulding materials are now so good that you can do this without losing any detail. You can't keep moulds made of flexible moulding materials, none of them age at all well.

You can make plaster casts more durable by adding some PVA into the mix.

[Caballo]

Thanks both.

Frater Crispus- the original colour was the dark brown now used as a background colour- a light wash would have been preferable! I found these both in a dusty corner of e-bay so I don't know if they are still being made.

But perhaps someone, somewhere has a mould of each....... :?:

[Cunicula]

Make some from yours! Clean the paint off first, though
http://www.trylon.co.uk/products/mouldmaking.htm

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Nice work Cabalo. It certainly makes the details stand out!
I thought they were mentioned as Votive peices, found in the smithy? Or am I making up things now?

[sulla felix]

Nice work Caballo!

Presumably the "wheel" in the background is what led to the possible identification as the god Taranis? I seem to recall that this god usually is depicted with a thunderbolt - could the club in fact be the thunderbolt, explaining the strange shape?

[mcbishop]

A while ago I was lucky enough to get a plaster moulding from this mould found at Corbridge.

It is identified as Taranis (page 165 Gods and Thunderbolts, De La Bedoyere) , and for several years has sat above my desk in a brownish overall colour. I also got a similar mould of Vulcan, I believe also from Corbridge.

These are interesting artefacts in their own right. I was given the smith god moulding by somebody and I ended up giving it to David Sim for his birthday (never really been a collector of things - part of being an archaeologist, I suspect, since if you spend your day digging the junk up you don't want it cluttering up your house). I have a suspicion that they may have been produced as a funds-boosting enterprise by the original excavators of Corbridge (1906-14), although I have never found any documentary proof of that. so there may be more around. There are examples of each on display in the museum at Corbridge.

Mike Bishop