Scale models have been around for thousands of years. The earliest models to be found in the British Museum are of Nile sailing vessels dating from the 12th Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. Around 4,000 years old, these lovingly modelled pieces represent funerary vessels, probably created as a memento for the grieving. Capturing large, emotionally charged objects at a reduced scale, enabling them to be kept close to the owner in a domestic setting, is an art with a clear and continuous lineage leading from the very earliest civilisations up to the present day.
Excellence
Often times models were created as tools in the design and build process of the full size subject, with much time and wealth employed in their building. There are many beautifully crafted model vessels to be found in the Greenwich Maritime Museum, dating from every period in British Maritime history. Almost all of them were created as tools to present and consider the design before investing in the massive project of building the real ship. The beauty and fascination of these miniature wonders demanded that following the completion of their primary purpose, they would almost always be repurposed to display the excellence of the design in the homes and offices of the investors and designers, their innate value prompting high levels of care and protection, ensuring their survival for centuries.
In the 20th century, car and aircraft designs joined the fine model cohort. These new and massively invested industries recruited the most creative engineers and designers who demanded accurate and detailed models as design and development tools, and so aircraft and cars joined ships and super yachts as fitting subjects for fine design and presentation modelling.
Aesthetics
Car design in particular was and is fully and very consciously focused on every aspect of aesthetics and the physical experience of the car. With no limitation on the materials, skills and man hours required to create them, nor on the consequent costs and selling prices of cars at the tip of the luxury pyramid, the car from the 1920s onwards quickly became a refined work of art in the hands of the world’s leading designers and engineers in Italy, Germany and the UK.
Collectors of these fine classic cars and supercars, such as Ralph Lauren and Richard Mille, were ahead of the game in bringing together carefully curated collections that already seemed extraordinarily valuable at the beginning of the 21st century, but have since outperformed even the most ambitious expectations, to become one of the best performing investments over the last 20 years, only equalled in potential by the fine art market. High-end classics and supercars are now rightly regarded as a high artistic endeavour with intrinsic and growing value. Cars sold at auction continue to break records, selling for what would have seemed insane sums only 20 years ago. The current record is with the extraordinary Uhlenhaut 300 SLR which sold at auction in 2022 for $135 million USD.
Fuelled by the increasing recognition of fine cars as high value art pieces, the creation of handmade models that capture the originals in fine detail has flourished, with a few very high value brands emerging, dominated by Amalgam Collection in the UK.
Authenticity
At every scale, the approach and methodology adopted by different model-makers to capturing the essential nature of the original varies enormously. Many try to capture as much as possible of the real materials and construction processes used in the real vehicle. This satisfies a desire for authenticity but sacrifices refinement in detail and convincingly realistic finishes. For instance, the use of real leather to make seat coverings while satisfyingly authentic, results in a very unsatisfactory look, with something of the feel of a dolls’ house. Alternatively, at the other end of the spectrum, makers like Amalgam use a wide range of materials, textures and paint effects, reaching for a perfectly realistic appearance of the model in a photograph.
With the universal use of computer-aided design (CAD) in current car and aircraft designs, and the extraordinary capabilities of the latest generation of digital scanning devices, the accuracy of models being created today far outstrips what was achievable just 20 years ago. Using 3D printing from finely reworked scan files not only accurately delivers the overall shape, even the subtle hills and dales in the panels of a Spitfire or a 1950s Ferrari body are captured and perfectly rendered in the model at scale.
The finest models being made today are using these technologies while retaining an artistic approach to the craft of model-making. Capturing and sharing the extraordinary beauty and engineering excellence of automotive and aerial art continues to ignite the passions of skilled model-makers around the world, and is increasingly in demand from collectors of fine objects.
