Comedy duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy appears in London as part of interactive icons of cinema trail
A COMEDY duo with one-half hailing from Ulverston can now be found in London.
The statue of Ulverston-born Stan Laurel and partner Oliver Hardy was brought to life by David Field, a Northern Irish sculptor and scenic prop-maker living and working in the capital of England.
After a successful career spanning 25 years, creating objects for theatre, TV, advertising, animation, film and more, Mr Field was tasked with bringing his comedy heroes to life.
Mr Field Said : “I’ve been a fan of Stan and Ollie since I was a schoolboy. To be invited to make their clay likeness statues was a dream come true.
Most of the statues were made at 3D Eye, a display and sculpture company in London, with each character sculpted in a classic pose.
Mr Field said: “The Laurel and Hardy characters are seen in a pose from their 1929 movie Liberty and what made these the most challenging of the 10 sculptures to make was the fact that the only images that I had to work from were screenshots from the film, so the quality was very poor.
“3D Eye provided a pair of small statuettes that were used as guides for the life-size statues. I was very fortunate that Stan Laurel and I are exactly the same height, 173cm, so I was able to take body and limb measurements of myself to speed up the sculpting process. I can honestly say that this is by far my favourite sculpture project to have worked on.”
The Laurel and Hardy statue took around 5 weeks to make from ordinary pottery clay. He added: ” It was a short period of time for such a complicated pair of statues but I think that I managed to capture a likeness and perhaps something of the spirit of the characters.”
