The Little World

Welcome to Scale Model Philosophy 101. You may take notes but remember that there is no exam at the end. Instead we have a sponsored argument.

When we see a scale model for the first time it can be an electrifying experience. – particularly the older 240 volt versions with the cloth wiring. You have to be careful where you touch them. Insulation only lasts a certain time.

But do we ever really see a scale model for the first time? Have we not always seen the thing in a magazine, a book, or on the screen.? This might have been the real thing in old newsreels or a preserved example of the same in a museum somewhere – the point is the scale model is a mere echo of the image we have in our minds.

And if your mind is anything like mine, that image is bound to be wrong.

Okay. We see the scale model, We recognise what it is…even if only by the label attached. We note the paintwork and finish. We mentally score it for what we imagine the authenticity to be. But in most cases we are adding one form of imagination to another. We imagine that the thing we have never seen in real life has aged in a way that an artist once depicted in ” Leslie’s Illustrated War Weekly “. In colours that are a description and set of factory numbers…reproduced by a Japanese paint maker who labels whatever they make to be whatever we want…

All at sea is the best way to describe this feeling, and wait till you see what the dazzle paint scheme for THAT looks like.

Is there an answer to the problem of unreality? ( Not if you watch popular television. ) Perhaps. In following it we will be wrong on many levels …but not all levels..

Make a model of what you’ve seen. What YOU’VE seen.

If you were an airframe repairman on F111’s in Queensland, make a model of an F-111. If you were a motor mechanic who repaired Holdens in Horsham, make models of the Holdens you repaired.

If you want a model of something that you have never seen, go see it. This may mean that you are looking at a preserved item in a museum, with all the changes that the staff have made to it since it was in service. Fine. In the museum it exists in some form and you can replicate that.

The modeller who makes replicas of everyday sights will be rewarded with the plaudits of those people who have also seen them. Even if the seeing was on a screen, the audience will feel a connection – the cartoon or science fiction model wins on this score. We may never have seen an Isotto-Franchini 345K but we’ve all seen Thunderbird Four.

You may think that this cuts out all the figure painters who make their models based upon paintings in art galleries. They can replicate the paintings and feel proud.