Additions to the Site, July 2023
/We have lots of exciting additions for our biannual update, starting with some by the grand master of the box diorama, Sheperd Paine. Freshening up his artist’s gallery was long overdue, and the tremendous score that Joe Berton, Darryl Audette, and Jim DeRogatis made at a recent auction of Shep’s boxes in Beloit, WI, from the collection of Ralph Koebbeman provided the perfect impetus. Visit Shep’s artist’s gallery here, and be sure to click on all of the new sub-pages for each piece, where additional images of the work in progress have been added along with some of Shep’s original diorama texts, his comments on the pieces from Jim’s must-own catalogue raisonné (Sheperd Paine: The Life and Work of a Master Modeler and Military Historian), and Jim’s chronicles of restoring 11 of Shep’s 25 boxes with new LED lighting, wiring, modern transformers, and minor repairs to assure that the boxes will look fantastic for another half-century. Many of these boxes will be on display at the annual Chicago Show sponsored by the Military Miniatures Society of Illinois on Oct. 20-21, 2023, so make your plans to be there now!
The Beloit auction also yielded a box by Rev. Spencer Van Gulick that Jim restored and added to his gallery, and another by Philip Stearns for which he did the same. And Joe had acquired a beautiful box by Peter Twist at the MFCA show in 2022, and that has been added to his gallery, along with some in-progress images of that restoration. Several other boxes sold at the Beloit auction have also been added to the Various Artists & Older Work Gallery, and we’ve also posted photos there of two dioramas by Lorado Taft at the Kenosha Public Museum, courtesy of Martin McClendon.
Meanwhile, we’ve been thrilled to see quite a few box diorama makers active in this century! We’ve added some great photos by Penny Meyer of new work seen at the 2023 MFCA Show by Peter Culos, Dennis Levy, Jon Harbuck, and Jim Rice, while others are chronicled on the Various Artists & Newer Work page, along with some boxes recently seen at The Ontario Model Soldier Show, and some recently found on the Web. Penny also photographed a new box by Andy Axtell at the 2023 show sponsored by the Historical Miniatures Society of Northeastern Oklahoma.
Finally, we’ve received some great submissions and created new artist’s galleries for David Aquino, Gerard Joria, and Warren Jones, and added the latest to the galleries for John Fraim and Ingvild Eiring. Thanks as always for checking out the site, and look for the next update later this Fall after the MMSI Show.