Making Our Christmas Window 2023
If you’re passing through Great Malvern this December, be sure to take a look into the magical and festive shop windows that line the main street! This year the traders of Great Malvern have partnered with a fantastic group of local artists as part of Creatives Connect art trail. The theme? Narnia! As we celebrate the 125th birthday of C.S. Lewis. Afterall, it was Malvern’s signature gas lamp posts that inspired the writer!
Never one to miss out on the fun, we had our own artist collaboration to fill our shop window with something great. Some creatures of Narnia and characterful elves work together, under Santa’s watchful eye, to make the Pevensie children’s gifts - gifts needed to help save Narnia! This display has been created over hundreds of hours of work by Anna Brook (owner of iapetus) and Vick McMillan (illustrator). Both of which can be found on instagram under the handles ‘AnnaMakesBeasts’ and ‘dawnovermuurk’.
How it began.
It might surprise you to know that the initial planning for this year’s Christmas window actually began all the way back in August. Our original idea being focused on still a workshop full of mischievous creatures, but instead overseen by The Green Man (also considered to be the original Father Christmas). Drawing inspiration from brilliant artists like Brian Froud. However, later on came the wonderful theme of Narnia and the opportunity to develop the idea further, exploring the less talked about moments of The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe.
The most important for us was that we drew inspiration for our characters and props from how they were depicted in the original books. For this, we spent time looking through work by the first person to illustrate the world of Narnia, Pauline Baynes. We considered the use of colours, the clothing they wore, and the characterisation of each creature. When combined with the folklore and more traditional Christmas imagery we were already looking at, this gave us a fantastic base to work from.
And so we began with sketching out our ideas for the scene and the characters who would then occupy it. With a background in illustration, Vick took to working on designing some quirky creatures and trying to portray the mischievous nature we know we wanted them to have. They also experimented with making a diorama of the window space for the first time - a new skill that was a great help for visualising the space and they will definitely now be revisiting for future projects.
In the meantime, with a background in sculpture, Anna began the process of figuring out the materials best for making the creatures. Taking much of her free time, she explored different methods of sculpting, looking into how to make poseable figures, and making moulds for features such as hands and feet.
The Making.
After making a rather extensive list of jobs that needed to be done, here was where our two artists separated to work on their assigned project focus.
It was time to bring these creatures we had been discussing for so long to life, and Anna was the one to do so! Now that moulds had been made for the hands and feet, she was able to cast them using a form of plastic so they could be repeated for each character made.
Then it was time to have fun sculpting the heads! Each head had been carefully hand sculpted using foam clay on a core of aluminium foil - foam clay being a super lightweight material that leaves no mess and can be painted once dry. Creating the heads one at a time meant that they all had their own individual personalities shining through. Once these had all been sculpted, Anna then hand painted each head and its matching appendages.
Next it was time to give the creatures a body! The parts were all attached to a frame made from thick aluminium wire, which is the essential element to make them poseable. After, the frames were wrapped in a combination of toy stuffing and fabric wrap to give them their shape and structure. Now fully put together, the creatures were then handed over to Vick who proceeded to use a combination of recycled materials and handmade accessories to dress them, making them already to work in Santa’s workshop.
The furry animal friends also in the scene, managing the workshop’s activities, had been handmade with needle felting by Anna for a previous window. They were all too lovely not to get their return (this time in some rather snazzy outfits!)
With all the helpers now complete, it was time for Anna to turn to the man himself. Using the same materials as the creatures, only on a much larger scale, she began the process of sculpting Santa’s head. Hand sculpting everything with amazing detail, the head was then coloured gently using chalk pastels before being placed on a mannequin body. Using recycled fabric, and even an old dress, Santa was adorned in his signature red.
While the characters of Narnia were being brought to life, Vick was working on creating the small workshop world they were going to occupy. A standout feature of the space being a large door decorated with the king of Narnia in mind, Aslan! The door had gone through many different phases during idea generation, but it was always known that we wanted some form of window we could light from behind (as seen in the diorama).
After sketching so many things on paper, Vick took to Adobe Photoshop to create the final design for the door along with the decided colour scheme. Red and gold was the way to go, both being colours that featured heavily with all things Aslan, often seen in the book illustrations. The favoured design shows a stained glass window of Aslan, surrounded by gold rays like the sun.
How do you create a stained glass window you can light from behind without actually using any glass? Vick began by printing a scaled up version of her Aslan design to the size we wanted the window to be as her template. On top of this she layered a sheet of acetate and carefully traced over the design with a glue gun - this would act as the leading. Next they mixed acrylic paint with regular PVA glue which was then carefully poured into the raised design. The paint/glue mix is the perfect level of translucent when dried to make the piece glow from behind with fairy lights, but opaque enough that even without the lights the colours are fantastically bold.
As for the door itself, the whole thing, door handle included, was made from recycled cardboard from iapetus’ own packing room and then hand painted by Vick to give it the wood effect.
Obviously, one of the key parts of this display was the gifts for the Pevensie children! Some of the items were sourced from the artists who already had the perfect items at home, while others again required some creativity. Peter’s shield, as well as Susan’s horn and quiver for arrows, were all made from painted recycled cardboard!
All shop windows participating in the Narnia Art Trail will have the same lamp post within them, being either part of the main design or a little more hidden - of course, it was time to decide how the lamp post would be incorporated into our own window. Already having made one window, Vick was happy to make another. A wintery scene was painted and placed behind in a cardboard frame where the lamp post vinyl was applied to a sheet of acetate as you would glass. The finishing touch being a little needle felted flame.
Setting Up.
Now that all the components necessary had been made, it was time to put hundreds of hours of hard work together. Once the window had been cleared out of its previous display of festive goodies, all that can be found within our gallery, it was given a good clean and it was ready. A checklist in hand, it was time to start.
As the display was to have some rather large backing boards to seal it all in, the order in which everything should go in was essential - knowing that once that last board was screwed on, we would not be able to change anything.
First in was the Aslan door as this required making sure any fairy light cables used to light the window could be put out the way when the first of the backing boards was next screwed into place. When the shelves had then been securely screwed into place, Anna and Vick could take some time to dress the scene. Using a combination of vibrant organza fabric, bits and bobs found over the previous weeks, and a few gift wrapped presents, it was beginning to take shape.
With the hanging of the lamp post window on the wall, all attention turned to characters. Having previously already discussed the interactions the creatures would be having with each other, it was an afternoon of careful positioning and fixing them in place so there would be no unfortunate falls. Characters such as the creature blowing the horn required some extra thought, but there’s nothing that a bit of invisible thread can not do!
As the last prop was set in place and Santa had at last entered the window, it was just finishing touches left to add. With a few fun little hidden items, and scene setting items like tools, it was decided that it was time for the final backing board. Gift boxes balanced on its selves, it was slotted into place and screwed right in.
At last, after months of preparation, the window was complete!
If you would like to see our amazing and magical window display, there’s still plenty of time to pop by the gallery and take a look.