Bugs in Bronze.

The brilliant thing about what I do is that I actually do not know what is going to crop up next! I was recently contacted by the renown sculptor Belinda Sillars www.belindasillars.com who asked if I could help her with a stag beetle commission. She explained that although she was a wildlife and equestrian sculptor, she had never 'done' an invertebrate. She needed to work from a real specimen, and preferably a dead one, to get it just right.The first problem was that, quite rightly, the British stag beetle (one of the largest insects in the UK), is protected as it is an endangered species. This means amongst other things, that it is illegal to take them from the wild. The second problem was that the stag beetles I have already in my pinned collections, are not British and do therefore, vary in many ways. Luckily I know someone who does legally have British stage beetles - the Hope Entomology Collection which is being preserved and studied at the Oxford University Natural History Museum. I then was able to spend a really fascinating afternoon watching Belinda twist a copper wire 'skeleton' into shape before adding a special wax and sculpturing the body. It was incredible to see her get the exact proportions and also to answer her questions. Why was it so hairy? Why did it have the horns? Can it fly and what does it sound like? How does it stand and hold itself? Why do we pin them with their tongues out? Why are they now endangered? All great observational questions and really fantastic to have an adult so interested. She left happily clutching her model ready to cast into a bronze and I was pleased that we had another bug convert! http://www.ptes.org/?page=192

Can you guess what it is yet . . . ?!