Senate Member
Posts: 6,139 
February 19th, 2007, 06:26 AM
As garden ornaments go, it's a bit of a white elephant...
By ARTHUR MARTIN
19th February 2007
When it comes to garden ornaments, some of us go for gnomes while the more ambitious might spring to a fountain or even the odd statue.
Mark Coreth has a lifesize African bull elephant.
The 49-year-old sculptor began his ambitious project after seeing the real thing in Kenya, on safari.
At home in Hatch End, Wiltshire, he realised the 15ft-tall art work would not fit inside his studio at the bottom of the garden.
Instead, he took his tools outside and began to create the 'skeleton' of the elephant out of chicken wire on the patio.
Using scaffolding to support the structure, he filled in the main body with polystyrene then gave it a coat of plaster.
It took the father of four a mere seven weeks to complete the elephant, which has now become something of a tourist attraction. It currently weighs three tons but will be given a bronze finish which will double its weight.
A collector in Australia has agreed to pay Mr Coreth around £300,000 for the finished work. And an art-lover from Italy has also commissioned him to produce another elephant to the same scale.
Mr Coreth, a former Army officer who took up sculpture as a hobby while in service, is already planning his next trip...watching polar bears in the Arctic.
dailymail.co.uk
As garden ornaments go, it's a bit of a white elephant...
By ARTHUR MARTIN
19th February 2007
When it comes to garden ornaments, some of us go for gnomes while the more ambitious might spring to a fountain or even the odd statue.
Mark Coreth has a lifesize African bull elephant.
The 49-year-old sculptor began his ambitious project after seeing the real thing in Kenya, on safari.
At home in Hatch End, Wiltshire, he realised the 15ft-tall art work would not fit inside his studio at the bottom of the garden.
Instead, he took his tools outside and began to create the 'skeleton' of the elephant out of chicken wire on the patio.
Using scaffolding to support the structure, he filled in the main body with polystyrene then gave it a coat of plaster.
It took the father of four a mere seven weeks to complete the elephant, which has now become something of a tourist attraction. It currently weighs three tons but will be given a bronze finish which will double its weight.
A collector in Australia has agreed to pay Mr Coreth around £300,000 for the finished work. And an art-lover from Italy has also commissioned him to produce another elephant to the same scale.
Mr Coreth, a former Army officer who took up sculpture as a hobby while in service, is already planning his next trip...watching polar bears in the Arctic.
dailymail.co.uk
