Model for The Priestley Mausoleum. 1996.

The idea for a mausoleum came about in the first year of the BA (Hons) Ceramics Degree course. The first year ceramics tutor Gwen Heeney liaised with the Archaeology Learning Officer Kenneth Brassil at The National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, where the exhibition Art, Ritual and Death in Prehistoric Wales was to take place, for the first year BA (Hons) Ceramic Degree students to undertake work for that exhibition. So before that exhibition opened we students were allowed in to see the artifacts and to sketch them for a basis for our own ceramic work that was then to be exhibited alongside those ancient artifacts. At the museum I was intrigued by the mock-up large wooden circle and I was inspired to take elements of that and incorporate them into my designs for a mausoleum – The Priestley Mausoleum as it became.

​The ceramic model for the The Priestley Mausoleum, partly based on that mock-up, reflects my interests. It combines elements from pre-historic Wales, the Great Western Railway (GWR), Robert Fairlie’s double-ended steam locomotives, cars of the 1940’s and 50’s, Egyptian, Classical, Roman, Baroque, Australian colonial and railway architecture, the pop singer Madonna, mosaics, Mediterranean colours and Christianity. The Dolphin heads are an ancient symbol for Christianity. The three sided three stories, the three golden pipes that are set across the structure to provide music from the wind blowing through them, represent the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit and my spirit, soul and body. A picture of Madonna was used as the model for the two angels at the front, each blowing a copper trumpet. This is a reference to the New Testament book of 1 Thessalonians, chapter 4. White Saint Thomas clay with a white tin glaze was used with various ceramic pigments to give colour and glaze fired to about 1080 degrees centigrade to cause the colours to run slightly to indicate my bodies decay after death. The model is about 15 inches high.

​If full size, you would walk up the ramp, open the GWR steam locomotive smoke box door, walk through to the chamber, to sit or recline on cushions placed upon the mosaic floor illustrating Christian symbolism, listen to the music provided by the wind blowing through the three golden pipes, to contemplate my corpse residing inside a three sided glass coffin suspended from the roof by three chains, to look up to view the sculptured stylised car fronts of the 1940’s and 50’s and to view a film of me, from decay, death and then back to life, like the video of Michael Jackson’s Earth Song.

​I took photographs of the Model and inside Chester Cathedral by The Grand Organ, which was rebuilt and enlarged by my in-laws, the Whiteley’s in 1876 and combined them to made a photomontage of how The Priestley Mausoleum would look if built inside the Cathedral by The Grand Organ. 

​Please see my back story regarding my Brick Sculpture and BBQ.