|
  The Lions International organization was scheduled to hold its annual meeting in 1951 in Salr Lake City. Casting about for a representative memento to give to participants, the organization settled on a skep, the old-fashioned beehive that was one of the symbols of the State of Utah. I am not sure how it came to pass but mom and dad’s business won the contract to make several thousand of these units.
Each unit consisted of the base which was hollow, to be filled with Miller’s clover honey which was sealed with ducco cement and a small circle of plastic, and an outercover which was shaped like the original skeps out of a cylinder of straw shaped into a cone. The bottom-inner section was white and the outer cone was yellow, with airbrushed shadows accenting the individual coils. he bees were painted brown and black.
These photos show the original model that dad made in his proposal to the Lions, and he used it to produce dozens of molds with which he and mom would fill the order. They had made several hundreds of the beehives by the time dad left for Alaska in the fall of 1950. Mom was left to finish the job and because she was using one medium sized kiln with three shelves, she was pressed for time. To be sure she met her deadline, the money being out ticket to Alaska, she started firing through the night. Things went fine until she was too exhausted. She slept through her alarm and when she woke up, half of the kiln had been damaged beyond repair so she was even harder pressed to finish the job. Determined that she would, she did what she had to do and did deliver the complete finished job on time and received the money to buy three tickets to Seward in the Summer of 1951.
-Sculpted, Molded, slip-cast animals
(cougar, prong-horn Antelope..)
-Sculpted, Molded, slip-cast dinosaurs
(2 sizes of Brontosaurus...)
|
