So…yes, this isn’t carved, but as this fiberglass concoction hangs, so also hangs a tale of carving.
I had booths at many boat shows during my stint as a maritime carver. My display of eagles, quarter boards, billet heads, and boat portraits received lots of attention. But, inevitably, not all of it was of a sort I really wanted. Alcohol complicated sales and display. Sloshed beer was a cleanup problem. Show attendees who were inebriated rarely bought. But, frequently caused problems.
At some point, a man would walk up and ask me how much It’d cost to carve a figurehead of his wife. “Like this (putting his hands behind his head). But bustier.”
After the first couple of polite replies, I grew tired of these requests for explicit work. So I developed a method of handling them.
a.) say sure, and the name a flagrantly outrageous price;
b.) then I’d ask for a signed consent form from his wife. Agreeing to this
c.) for the genuinely incorrigible, I’d refer them to a place in Newport where the exact model pictured here was available for about $150 in fiberglass.
I actually printed up a consent form for those who purported to be serious about this but never got one back signed…I wonder why?
This beauty hung in the Oldies Marketplace (Newburyport, MA) for several months among all the fabulous bijoux before it was snapped up. The last time I was there, it had been replaced by one equally well endowed. Thereby proving, I guess, that there was a market for them and probably that I contributed to it.
Please, no mermaid requests without a signed consent form!