My torso sculptures need to be bolted into place, to keep them upright. That means rods in their legs which must be screwed into a plinth.
You can buy ready-made plinths – or rent them for a week which would be cost effective only if you never planned more than one exhibition.
ArtPlinths.co.uk make some nice looking ones, but they aren’t cheap. And I’m not sure they would meet my exact needs. Not that I’m picky, but my sculptures have particular requirements.
I saw some nested plinths – like Russian dolls – at plinthsandpedestals.co.uk, and they seemed a clever way to minimise storage and facilitate transport. But their solution is to reduce the height of each plinth, so when nested the legs don’t stick out. As a result each sculpture would be at a slightly different height, which (in my view) would look odd.
So I’ve commissioned a set of six for myself. The carpenter will put felt inside each plinth, so when they are slid into each other there will be little or no scratching of the paint.
So while I could get standard plinths for roughly the same price, these tailor-made ones will be designed to my own specification (no screws or nails showing, no butt joints, no projections, nested, and felt lined to prevent damage).
Each plinth costs over £100, and because the sculpture has to be fixed to the plinth (to keep it upright), the cost has to be added to the purchase price of the artwork. Unless, of course, the buyer wants to buy their own plinth, have the holes drilled in the right places, and then get the whole thing bolted together with rods and washers.