Lessons From Silver Studio in Valuing Wrightscale 16mm

 

No apologies for looking at parallels with an eminent Silver Studio artist as we ramble on about valuing your Wrightscale models

Wrightscale 15mm Excelsior models

You like good pictures and it is interesting to consider the question: what constitutes a lifestyle asset.

Malcolm has inherited the copyright for  Frank Price, the last Chief Designer of Silver Studio and so we can illustrate our thougts with piuctures from another art form. Our readers like original illustrations, so here we go!

Previously, I observed that a degree of scarcity increased the value of a Wrightscale model. They are not produced in the volume that, say, the fine plastic goods purveyed by LGB have achieved. Now, this blog post goes on to argue the opposite. The fact that there are other models out there actually increases the value of yours.

An artist needs to put the work out there, for the benefit of previous customers as well as to increase future sales. Silver Studio is a case in point. As Philip Hook remarks, the most over-worked word in the vocabularies of dealers etc and here I would include fashionable merchants of fabric and wallpaper, is ‘iconic’. Thus for example, we have the Liberty print. The same dense, floral fabric patterns crop up from decade to decade and are still to be found in catalogues today.

Design by Frank Price of Silver Studio. The original is 8 by 8 cm, that is at the stage where he would begin discussions with the client in this case possibly Liberty. Illustration courtesy MD Wright  

The underlying assumption is that the arts are good insofar as they are ‘typical’ or ‘recognisable’. A woman will pay a 10% premium for a blouse in a print which has her friends cooing ‘Ah! I so love Liberty!’ The pleasure goes both ways. The purchaser feels that the premium price was worth it. The friend feels pleasure in having spotted the iconic design. On the strength of their shared joy, they will indulge in another skinny cappuccino together.

Liberty owes many of its hallmark prints to the artists of the Silver Studio, especially to Frank Price.

Frank Price also produced chintzes, often inspired by older patterns. He gave them an edge, however, for example, updating an old Harry Napper birdie design.

 Harry Napper was a highly respected Silver Studio designer 1896-1906. The brief for Price was to give it a modern edge. He did so by creating a design in three planes. One plane very cleverly seems to reach towards the viewer. The bird comes out to meet the observer. The supporting foliage is indicated on the second plane. Behind yet again are shadows.

As well as homage to Harry Napper, Frank has extracted the visual language of Japan, the use of shadows to underline reality. Silver Studio designs regularly borrowed from Japan and so, just as in the case of the Liberty fabric. The observer says ‘Aha!’

Design by Frank Price for the Silver Studio SD16879. Reproduced courtesy of MODA, Middlesex University

Unfortunately for Silver Studio and Frank Price, their names were not recongnised until too late, after the Studio closed.

There is iconic art and iconic Wrightscale. Malcolm’s Unique Selling Point is Live Steam in 1/19 scale, running on 32mm track. This already demanding characteristic is combined with accuracy, or, more correctly, fidelity to a prototype. These qualities were not chosen in an arbitrary way.

A model at this scale on that track is one that runs on real-life 2’ or 60cm gauge. This gauge was originally rather obscure, used by the very trail-blazing Festiniog (Ffestiniog) railway. The history and personalities appealed to him. Then the gauge ‘jumped’ to France. Narrow gauge innovators such as Decauville specialised in 40 and 50cm until a Captain in the French Army, Prosper Péchot, proved the worth of 60cm. The Army reluctantly adopted his ideas; the German Army copied him enthusiastically and soon the gauge was widely used. Again, this is quite a powerful story, moving from military exercises to the trenches of the First World War. After the French and Germans adopted the gauge, forestry railways and public carriers in Britain began to adopt it as well. Behind the ‘icon’ there is a genuine artistic voice.

Wrightscale 16mm'Excelsior' in 0-4-0 configuration as used on the Kerry Forest Tramway

This USP is unattractive to other model-makers. If they want accuracy, they go electric. If they want ‘Live Steam’, they go freelance. Wrightscale models have been pirated and reverse engineered, but the connoisseur can easily tell the difference. There are parallels with work fromn SIlver Studio. At the bottom of the Frank Price design can be seen ten coloured rectangles. Each on is a colour which has to be separatelyprinted on to the surface of the fabric. This requires 1000% more labour, much more skill and great possibilities for wastage.

You will observe the essential paradox in Malcolm’s art. There is a similar paradox found in Silver Studio. Both had chosen a USP which is tricky and 'uncommercial'. This tends to make them scarce. At the same time, there are/were enough examples out there to create a market.Even more importantly, there are enough people with the good taste to appreciate rare quality when they see it. For good quality 16mm scale, the possible market is between five and ten thousand, judging from the membership of the 16mm Association and the attendance at the AGM. Of course only a fraction would be possible purchasers. Under a thousand Wrightscale locomotives have ever been produced.

Wrightscale 16mm model of 'Excelsior' in 0-4-2 configuration,as used until it was scrapped

More would-be buyers than sellers? You have a rising market. Prices will go up. 

If you are interested

Philip Hook Breakfast At Sotheby’s is a shrewd and humorous look at making money on the art market. It is well written. You can see that he even insists on an apostrophe in his title. Not many authors go for this level of detail.

For the full story of Festiniog to First World War by way of the French Army, read Colonel Péchot: Tracks To The Trenches

For more about the Silver Studio, look at the online archive of the Museum of Domestic Art and Architecture at www.moda.mdx.ac.uk

For more about Frank Price, read Frank Price: Golden Hand Of The Silver Studio

 

 

How to value a Wrightscale 16mm model

Silver Studio and 16mm; art has a link with money, so please read on!

Before going any further, we wish you all a happy new year. 

Silver Studio ran from 1880 to 1965 in London. At first it produced 'everything for a well-furnished home' but it was always best known for fabrics and wall-paper. Its products are recognised as artworks, protected by international copyright law. Wrightscale too is a studio, recognised as such by the Federal Law of the USA and its products are artworks.

A Wrightscale 16mm Baldwin Gas Mechanical locomotive, finished in Field Grey

Silver Studio was dissolved in 1967 but many of its designs can still be purchased. Much work is now in the archives of Liberty, Sanderson, Warner and many celebrated fashion houses whose products are famous and pricey. The remaining intellectual property and unsold artworks were donated to Hornsea College of Art, London by Rex Silver’s heir. Hornsea College merged with others to form Middlesex Polytechnic and this in turn became Middlesex University. The archive became part of the Museum of Domestic Art and Architecture and still feeds into modern domestic design. To consult it go to www.moda.mdx.ac.uk

Art clearly means money. Wrightscale products claim to be art for various reasons.

They represent a degree of uniqueness. An oil painting stands alone, as does a single sculpture. When several bronze castings are made of a statue,these don't cease to be art. Just look at the auction prices!  The same applies to woodcuts, fabric designs or the text of novels. They  are protected, as are Wrightscale models. They represent a degree of art. They represent a vision of the world that has been made tangible. A ‘mute inglorious Milton’ isn’t an artist. No matter how wonderful the vision, if it has not some shareable reality, it’s not art. 

This design comes from the Silver Studio Archive at MoDA - our thanks for allowing this to be reproduced. It is a sketch by Frank Price, the last Chief Designer. Though just a sketch, it has excited interest eg from Pinterest. Reproduction rights are expensive

The world is full of tangible objects that do not qualify as art – coal, a loaf of bread. Many beautiful things, such as a view or a fascinating fossil aren’t art.

Both Silver Studio and Wrightscale products don’t fit quite squarely into the Fine Art category. From around 1900 to the time of its closure, Silver Studio designs were aimed to be copied for use around the world.  Wrightscale models are prized for being consistent and yet also supply is limited by how many Malcolm can make.

The models, the fabrics and wall-paper are all designed to ‘do something’.The creator knows where he/she is going. Extremophile critics would claim that their very usefulness disqualifies them. Because they have an end, they are not the exploration that an honest-to-goodness-useless oblong of canvas or ‘art bronze’ can represent. To them, the true artist is Paul Klee taking a line for a walk.

A 16mm model, just like fabric or wall-paper is designed to fulfil to fulfil a purpose. This Wrightscale Quarry Hunslet is not just a pretty face. It is moving slate wagons. Does that make it less an art object?   

There are indeed borderline objects which are both volume-produced but have artistic qualities. Our much prized bidet whose design was inspired by Japanese porcelain is pleasing, well made and now has some scarcity value. As a product of industrial design, it is an artwork. As a bidet, it isn’t.We might auction it, but only on GumTree. It wouldn't go to Christies and certainly not to an auction of collectibles. to an auction of collectibles.

Art can be immensely valuable. Recognised artworks can go for huge sums of money. At the same time, and here’s the paradox, art is inclusive. No-one needs to be left out.

This detail from a design by Frank Price is also reproduced by kind permission of MoDA. The artist was clearly intending to bring some of the joy of Van Gogh's Almond Blossom - a priceless artwork to a wider public.

16mm in general and the designs of Silver Studio belong within the territory of art. They have a functional existence, they invite the participation of their public and enjoying them is one of the most inclusive of human activities. Wrightscale models are bought because they work. In the same way, fabric has always been useful for covering, shelter and as a way of showing off.

Both have a contradictory quality. They are prized because failure is a possibility. Sometimes one of our locomotives doesn’t move. Sometimes a fabric doesn’t ‘work’ in a room. Time and care are needed. There is trouble shooting, there is rethinking. A relationship is built up between the person and the model, or indeed the family and their furnishings. As previous blogs suggest, this is slow pleasure, unlike the instant gratification offered by, say, a sugar hit, a violent movie or junk food. Once the savour is acquired, the pleasure of a tastefully furnished room or an afternoon on a 16mm live steam layout must be one of the finest human experiences.

Both the 16mm experience and appreciation of tasteful decoration are surprisingly inclusive. To experience the 16mm experience, all you have to do is to belong. To belong, all you need is to want to belong. A nominal subscription is needed, less than the price of regularly buying a magazine. You are then welcome at Society meetings. The only cost is getting there. In the same way someone can be a fabric artist. The story of Frank Price, Chief Designer at Silver Studio, illustrates this precisely. He came from humble beginnings, spent much of his working life among art treasures and left us all some of the finest designs in wallpaper and fabrics.

Association of 16mm Narrow Gauge Modeller www.16mm.org.uk

S. Wright ‘Frank Price: Golden Hand Of The Silver Studio’ Birse Press available from Camden Miniature Steam