Where are they now?…

I was wondering today if you still have some of the original sculptures that you used to make your molds from? I’m not to clear on the mold making process, but from what I understand you produce a master casting from the original then that is used for making the molds. Umm, I’m sure that’s not quite right, but regardless it still makes me wonder how many of the original sculptures that became production items still remain in your possession. Are some of them hard to part with, considering the amount of time you put into them?

That’s pretty close! A mold is made on the rough clay original and then a plaster reproduction is made form that mold. I detail the reproduction.
The original clay sculptures often get ruined when a mold is made. They are not detailed, so they are rough looking and not something you would want to display. We probably still have many of them -somewhere, but many of them were probably pitched after a mold was made.

I do still have the originals of many of the first animal line, and a few others. The baby kirin, the Secret Keeper and the rock dragon are here in my studio, but who knows where the others are!
The “original masters” that have been made from the original clay sculpture are the ones I put the work into. We make a mold on that one to make the first “production master” which is used to make the production molds on. When we are pretty sure it is working ok, then an epoxy master is made . We end up with several generations of “masters”. I was just looking at the 6 or 7 masters we have for the Male dragon, starting from the very first ones we used with the waxed eyelids that had to be repaired each time a mold was made on it…and deciding which to keep and which to throw out. I kept the really old ones, but they get pretty disgusting looking after years of use pouring molds!