Entries by Ben Taggart

The Doric Cat Flap!

I’ve been making architectural models professionally for over 25 years and this project is definitely the most unusual thing I’ve ever been asked to build! I was approached to create a Doric portico, not in itself an unusual request, until he told me it was to frame a cat flap in his kitchen! This year has been tough for us all and receiving this request really made me laugh and cheered me up.

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The Auschwitz Model: The Experience of studying the unimaginable

In 1999 the sculptor, artist and designer Gerry Judah asked me to help construct a model portraying a section of the vast Auschwitz concentration camp as it existed in 1944. Although it has been over 20 years since the model was completed I still regard it as perhaps the most important project I have worked on and certainly the one which required the most emotional energy as well as creative skill.

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A Miniature Piece of History

From 8th – 10th November I will be exhibiting my work at Handmade in Chelsea, It’s a fantastic show packed with products from contemporary designers, makers and craftsmen. I’m particularly excited about this show as it is my 25th year running Ben Taggart Modelmaking & Design and to celebrate I’m launching a new product – […]

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In Miniature

I’ve just finished reading Simon Garfield’s excellent book, ‘In Miniature’. It is an investigation into the fascination so many share for small worlds, models and the miniscule. Often when I tell people that I make models I have to overcome a strange feeling of being misunderstood, or more accurately, mis-labelled. Modelmaking is a very broad […]

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A Small Battle

It’s interesting to wonder just how you arrive at your career. Could it be in the genes? I have always known the story my ancestor William Siborne who, in the 1830s set to work on a massive model of the Battle of Waterloo. This rather eccentric project became a lifetime obsession and unfortunately, the undoing […]

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