Additions to the Site, December 2022

First up, we’re excited to have created new gallery pages for Italian modeler Francesco Terlizzi, French modeler Richard Poisson, Norwegian artist Ingvild Eiring, and the celebrated Norwegian diorama builder Per Olav Lund. In the existing galleries, we’ve added the latest by our friends and fellow box enthusiasts Jon Harbuck and John Long, and the site’s co-editor Jim DeRogatis has added two more boxes he built in 2022 to his own gallery page. Several photos of recent (or recently unearthed) box dioramas have been added to the Various Artists Newer Work page, including work by James Rice, Joris van Os, Ogan Akinci, Lorenzo Bernardin, and Mike Lynch, in addition to the results of the “Box Diorama Challenge” by the Plastic Crack Podcast Facebook Group. We’ve also added photos that Joe Berton found in an odd listing at Sotheby’s for “A Pair of Frog Dioramas, Probably French, Late 19th Century.” A fan of the site in the Netherlands made us aware of Dutch diorama builder W.G.L. Wieringa (1889-1973), and we’ve added some photos of his work to the Various Artists Older Work page, while on the Feature Articles page, we’ve added a “new” old piece, an epic chronicle of the construction of Brian Courtney’s box “Billeted on the Peasants,” and a fun piece on kids’ enduring love for shoebox dioramas that we’d missed last year in The New York Times. Thanks as always for taking a look at the site!

Additions to the site, June 2022

UPDATES TO THE SITE, JUNE 9, 2022

First up: The founders of this site have all been busy, and you can see Jim DeRo’s newest boxes, “Seven Steps” and “Night Raid, 1945,” on his artist’s gallery page; Barry Biediger’s latest, “Beyond the Seventh Moon,” on his page, and Darryl Audette’s “Glory to Ukraine” in his gallery, each with links to additional views and notes on their construction. Jim and Barry both won gold medals at the MFCA 2022 show for their boxes (and Barry was further honored by being named a Grand Master), and several other boxes were also on display at that fantastic show, including Dennis Levy’s latest, “Unconscious Distortion,” a tribute to René Magritte, which can be seen on his page; Joe Berton’s “Van Gogh’s Bedroom,” with a new lighting scheme since it was first seen at MMSI 2021 (it claimed a gold at MFCA as well); the first of what we hope will be many boxes by Peter Culos, “Theatre of Spoil and Destruction” (he’s got several others planned already, so we’ve added his own gallery page); a box called “The Plague” by Bob Huryk, which can be seen on the Various Artists page, and a very promising box-in-progress by Michael Scarborough, “The Philosopher’s Study,” which we’ve added to his gallery page (perhaps prematurely, but it sure is beautiful!). Richard Mason has another fantastic airplane box added to his gallery page, with an accompanying step-by-step overview, and we’ve created a gallery page for Gareth McGorman, who has yet to build a box, though he rightly claims his photography set-pieces as “box-adjacent.” We added another new gallery page for Hervé Dagès, a French artist who is a retired Brigadier General of the French National Gendarmerie and a graduate of the Special Military Academy of Saint Cyr created by Napoleon in 1802 (not surprisingly, he is fascinated with the First Empire); in addition to sharing his debut box, he compiled a great step-by-step article. Also added to the Various Artists page of recent work are two finds from Facebook (with very little known about either artist); six examples of the work of Jean Diorama, a great diorama artist who’s tackled a few pseudo-boxes (and who was recently featured on an episode of the Sprue Cutters Union podcast), and some of the work of Andy Acres, a London-based modeler who specializes in small eerie scenes in boxes, and who we first became aware of through this article, while Mike Pierce submitted two photos of a unique Civil War diorama in an ammunition box at the Tennessee Welcome Visitor Center, which we’ve added to the Various Artists, Older Work page. Finally, we’ve added a couple of new pieces linked from the Feature Articles page, including a useful glossary of electronic terms submitted by Noah and Selena McCoy, a piece on the 1979 box “Beyond Tourcoing” by Geoff Barnes, a new photo in the article about the Tonka box-diorama-in-a-box kits, and, if you scroll to the bottom of the article about the restoration of Shep Paine’s classic “Gun Deck of the HMS Victory” box, an update about the latest round of repairs Jim made in May 2022 to keep that classic ship-shape. Thanks as always for visiting the site and clicking around!

Additions to the site, November 2021

It’s been more than a year since this site was updated, and we have plenty of great additions that have accumulated during that time. Sorry for keeping everyone waiting, but, well, there were more than a few distractions until recently (few of them good, starting with the most deadly global pandemic since 1918; ugh!)

First off, this site’s two primary editors, Barry Biediger and Jim DeRogatis, have launched a podcast, Small Subjects: Big Topics About Miniatures & Modeling, which you can find here. It’s not only about box dioramas—we hope to cover a wide range of topics about miniature sculpting and painting, along with interviewing the top artists in this field—but, of course, given our primary passion, there’s talk about boxes, too. We hope you’ll give it a listen! (In addition to the link above, you can find us streaming on all of the major podcast platforms, including Spotify, Apple, and Overcast, and we are hosting a blog for the show with images we discuss in each episode on this site here.)

We are always especially happy to add new artists’ galleries to the site. For this update, you can find additions fromMMSI President and veteran modeler Joe Berton, who just did his first box diorama this year, “Van Gogh’s Bedroom”; a fun gallery for creative (and monster-movie-obsessed) Australia modeler Alain Lunke; a gallery of the the classically-inspired boxes by Victor Wong, and the first box-diorama efforts by Italian modeler Antonio Marcello, Pennsylvania modeler Gary Sausmikat, and South African modeler Richard E. Mason.

New boxes have also been added to several of the existing artists’ galleries (at least everyone was busy during COVID!). These include the gold-medal-winning “Nevermore” tribute to Edgar Allen Poe by Bob Bethea; Jim DeRo’s latest box, “Samhain,” which won a Silver Medal at the MFCA Virtual Show in 2021 (there are also new and better pictures by Bob Sarnowski of “Adieu!,” which claimed a Silver Medal in historical at MMSI 2021, and “Witches to their Sabbath,” an MMSI Gold Medal in fantasy in 2021); Greg DiFranco’s newest lighted flats box, “Saint George and the Dragon”; Nick Infield’s new box “Ray Harryhausen and Mighty Joe Young” (along with a photo of his first box, “Napoleon and Berthier on Campaign”), and the latest by Andy Axtell, “Daniel in the Lions’ Den.”

Finally, we’ve added two very nice boxes by an unknown French modeler to the Various Artists page (and any info would be most welcome!), along with two pseudo-boxes that Jim Rice displayed at the 2021 MMSI Chicago Show, and in the Feature Articles section, you’ll find some great photos of museum dioramas that come from the blog run by modeler and diorama enthusiast N. Kalis, who chronicles these pieces in his blog here.

Thanks as always for clicking around, and we hope you enjoy!

Additions to the site, September 2020

In the artists’ galleries established earlier, I’ve added my latest box dioramas “Witches to Their Sabbath” and “Adieu!” to my own gallery page, along with links to some additional images of the projects in construction, and I’ve posted a box by my co-editor Barry Biediger that had been missing from his gallery page, a 2016 effort he built for the great artist Bill Merklein. Three new boxes have also been added by Greek modeler Andreas Rousounelis; a new Star Wars-themed diorama enhances Dave Reynolds’ page, and there’s a new piece by Andy Axtell. I was also happy to add several new artists’ galleries; it’s great to see modelers and miniaturists either turning to this form or finally bringing their work to our attention! These additions include the first box diorama by Texas modeling legend Bob Bethea; the incredible work of veteran Australian modeler Geoff Barnes; another box debut, this one by Jon Harbuck (who also wrote an article on the history and step-by construction); some fine pieces by Washington state modeler Bill Huffman, U.K. modeler Ian Duthie, another first-timer who built an impressive box (and he wrote an article, too!). On the Various Artists page, you can find new images of boxes by Jean-Bernard André, Noel Meyer, Linda Mayer, and an unknown artist who created a great space-station scene that we’d love to know more about. Finally, for the Feature Articles page, in addition to those mentioned above, Joe Berton unearthed an article by Philip O. Stearns about another of his box dioramas that we’d previously missed, a Napoleonic scene chronicle in Military Modelling in 1975; Joe also sent us some images of the box dioramas at the Musée de l'Armée, taken not all that long ago when we were actually able to travel, and Barry Biediger made some notes on using forced perspective, written in response to a modeler who wrote to this site looking to use that technique in his first box diorama.

Also worth noting on the news front is a new diorama book by Marijn Van Gils, whose box dioramas are featured here, that shares the philosophy of this site and the late, great Sheperd Paine, encouraging modelers to stretch beyond the familiar, try new things, and create with unbridled imagination.

Additions to the site, September 2019

My co-editor Barry Biediger made some additions several months ago when I was deep in a book deadline (sorry, we didn’t keep track of those!), but I have just added the latest MFCA gold-medal-winning box to Barry’s artist gallery; several fantastic pieces to Darryl Audette’s gallery; new work to the pages for José María Bolio, Cynthia Parson McDaniel, and Andreas Rousounelis, and Michael Scarborough; new galleries for John Fraim, Alex Friedrich, Robert Santos, and Tommi Samone, and recent finds of interest to the Various Artists, Newer Work page. Enjoy!