Andrew Carnegie

Sly was commissioned by the entrepeneur Peter de Savary to design a life-size bronze sculpture of the self-made millionaire and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie for the Abbey Golf Lodge, Rhode Island, USA. The sculpture was commissioned in a golfing pose to represent that Carnegie was a keen golfer. The commission presented the problems of how to create an authentic image of a well known figure when there are many written accounts about him, but the visual documentation is limited to a small number of posed photographs.

Using a range of source material, including reference material from Skibo Castle in Scotland (Carnegie's ancestral home), posed portrait photographs of Carnegie and a selection of written accounts about him, his nineteenth century golfing attire and equipment (which informed the portrayal of his body size) and accounts of the game, Sly invented a life-size three-dimensional portrait of Carnegie. Sly also needed to construct plausible physical attributes, posture and golfing technique, through an examination of the relationship between Carnegie's recorded height (5' 2") and his surviving golfing equipment, which includes a variety of clubs and some written descriptions of his matches.

Through a process of scaling up selected visual material and interpretation from photographs, Sly modelled the figure directly in clay. An adjustable steel armature was constructed using methods Sly has developed within his practice to allow flexibility throughout the modelling process; and complex plaster moulds of the finished clay model were made by Sly using a method of plaster release devised to enhance the precision and speed of the casting process in preparing the finished plaster cast for the foundry. These techniques developed by Sly inform the teaching of this process at Wimbledon and consequently the work of graduates, who work within the industry, including the Tussaud’s studio.