From Chapter Seven of Sheperd Paine: The Life and Work of a Master Military Modeler and Historian by Jim DeRogatis (Schiffer Books, 2008)

It’s fitting that this book concludes its examination of Sheperd Paine’s modeling with his boxed dioramas, because these display the pinnacle of all of his skills, with a deep knowledge of history; exquisite design; incredible sculpting; ingenious scale modeling; vibrant painting, and dramatic lighting. Simply put, they are as close as we are every likely to come to the fantasy of a time machine, enabling to step back, if only for a moment, to watch as history unfolds. The twenty-five boxed scenes that Shep built during his modeling career remain some of the most famous dioramas a miniaturist has ever produced. They represent the peak of what can be accomplished in this art form, and the stories behind each of them are fascinating.

J.D. It’s finally time to talk about the boxed dioramas, Shep, but before we get to your work, do you remember the first box you saw?

S.P. There’s a mistaken impression that I invented the boxed diorama, but, again, that is just not true. Boxed dioramas were a poplar feature in museums long before I was born, and of course, everybody had to build a shoebox diorama in grammar school.

There was also a man named Theodore Pitman in the 1930s whose company built some very good historical boxes in Massachusetts. Some of them are at Harvard University, and some are in the war memorial at the Newton Town Hall. I hadn’t seen any of these at the time I started, but his work was impressive. The figures were larger than mine—about six inches high—and they remain some of the best museum dioramas I have seen. He did some fairly well-known subjects: the fortifications at Bunker Hill; Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg; a World War I battle scene; the siege of the Alamo; a very good depiction of the spar deck of the Constitution in battle, and a nice scene of Washington at Valley Forge. So this is an old tradition; it’s hardly something that I invented.

I think the first two boxed dioramas I ever saw were at the Philadelphia show the first year that I went, either in 1968 or ’69. One was by Ray Anderson, who was the leading maker of boxed dioramas at the time; I think it was “The Casting of the Liberty Bell.” The other box that I found particularly intriguing was one that the Military Collectors of New England did of the assault on Bunker Hill, based on the famous Howard Pyle painting. They’d done it all in 54mm figures, but they had put a small opening on the front of the box and used a reducing glass on it, so that when you looked through the reducing glass, they looked like the most beautifully detailed 30mm figures you ever saw. The only problem was that it resulted in a fairly large box with a very small opening, but the idea was still very clever. I think Henri Lion was the creative mind behind that one.

J.D. This is a form of diorama that we’re not really seeing much these days, and yet people always love them: If there are three or four boxes at a show like MMSI or MFCA, people are always huddled around them.

S.P. I think that since Bill Horan and Mike Blank brought their boxes to the World Expo in Boston in 2005, we might start seeing a resurgence again. And Nick Infield and Dennis Levy are both doing interesting boxes.

J.D. Personally, it’s the woodworking that I’ve always found most daunting about attempting a boxed diorama. The modeling I can handle—or at least I can try—but I’m not sure I can build a square box, much less light it!

S.P. It’s not as hard as you think, but it is stuff you can’t do in an apartment. When I was living in an apartment, I didn’t have the facilities to do that kind of carpentry work, so a friend of mine, Ron Hillman, built the actual boxes for me. Later on, when I moved into a house, I built the boxes myself, but you can always get someone to help you with that stuff if you need to. Besides, if people are looking at the outside of the box, that means you really haven’t done your job with the inside! But neither the woodworking nor the lighting is really that hard.

I’ve always said that the hardest part of doing a boxed diorama—and this applies to any diorama, but it’s especially true of boxes—is the planning: getting the composition and the design set to the point where you’re effectively telling the story. Last year at a show in Canada, I met a guy who had done a boxed diorama, and he asked me for some criticism. I told him, “This is good and this is good,” and I made a few suggestions for improvements. A photographer friend who was there overheard this and later sent me an e-mail saying, “I’m interested in the way you criticized that man’s work, because you were saying things about composition and design, and in model work you don’t hear that very often.” I wrote back and told him that’s too bad, because those really are the most important factors.

I’ve seen so many dioramas that failed before they even started, because they hadn’t been properly designed. The design and the composition—what you decide to tell, and what you decide to leave out—those are the most important things. In some ways, dioramas are so interesting because you are telling a story without words. It’s like silent movies, except that the actors aren’t even moving.