Author Archives for nancy wisser

Small Henges and a Henge Spotter’s Time Out

photo from modelermagic.com

Today–more small Stonehenges for the home. Above is the Larson Designs 1/72 scale Stonehenge model, a pre-made resin model that sells for between $50 and $75.

It has its faults but over all it is not a bad model. Many stones are in the right places including the trilithon horseshoe faces the three-lintel segment of the outside circle, always a sign that someone actually looked at Stonehenge before making it. And that IS desirable. (We learned that Larson Designs makes or at least made a Firefly Class freighter model. Also desirable.)

And this little set is made by Mosaic Mad Romans, a UK company that makes simple mosaics for children. This kit does need assembly. The company claims it is made of marble, which outclasses the real monument to a considerable degree. We are not certain how this qualifies as a mosaic, but it is charming, and once again the trilithon horseshoe/three-lintel stretch thing happens, so we’ll overlook that small detail.

There is no shortage in the world of Stonehenge sets and kits for home use. How many households include one (or more), we wonder? Stonehenge continues to proliferate its offspring by infecting and re-infecting the human mind in a natural reproductive process. It is awe-inspiring to watch, although we could do with David Attenborough to do it justice.

While the creation of Stonehenge replicas never takes a rest, Clonehenge will be going on hiatus for a month or so. (Unless we receive or stumble upon an example we cannot resist posting. We’re weak like that!) We don’t even plan to post the Friday foodhenge for a while. It even could be longer than a month until we return to the task. We shall see. We stand confident in the conviction that we will not be missed.

If you do get a twinge, the world is full of materials for making Stonehenge replicas. Go to it! Or just keep your eyes open. You know they’re out there. Always take a camera. So until next time, friends, happy henging!

Most Accurate Digital Model Ever: Now There’s No Good Excuse!

photo by English Heritage, but found here

A brief much more sensible post. We know last week’s was less than optimal. We will try to be less silly today.

Won’t be too difficult because we have only a simple news item to report from the English Heritage website: “A detailed survey of every stone that makes up Stonehenge using the latest technology, including a new scanner on loan from Z+F UK that has never before been used on a heritage project in this country, has resulted in the most accurate digital model ever produced of the world famous monument.” There is also a video that we wanted to imbed here but couldn’t, a preview of the scan results.

The news item goes on: “With resolution level as high as 0.5mm in many areas, every nook and cranny of the stones’ surfaces is revealed with utmost clarity, including the lichens, Bronze Age carvings, erosion patterns and Victorian graffiti. ”

This project is significant for us, of course, because there is now a super-accurate model of Stonehenge for people to use when creating their own replicas and for us to use for comparison when judging replicas. Of course we wonder things, like–did they just scan the stones or did the scan the ground, too, so that everything is place in exactly the right place and at exactly the right angle? No mention of that here. Maybe later.

The last paragraph of the page at that link (which we are sure you clicked on!) implies that some of the information may be used to make a replica for the future visitor center. When that happens,we will be sending out a plea to our minions for pictures of that replica to post here.

But for now we just wanted to keep you informed of the latest news in Stonehenge models and replicas. Thank you for visiting.

To tell you the truth, we never suspected when at the age of 19 we hauled those stones out there and tipped them up under cover of night, how interested, even obsessed with them people would eventually become. We thought for a while we might one day come out and admit the hoax, but with the tourism and giving jobs to archaeologists, who, it must be admitted, need something to do, the whole idea of “ancient” Stonehenge has taken on a life of its own. We may never publicly admit that it was just a lark we pulled after a friend bragged of building Glastonbury Tor and placing that cheap folly on top.

Oops! Getting off on a tangent again. We don’t want to go blathering on about the past like an old person. Can’t imagine anyone being interested. Cheers, and, until next time, happy henging!

Feeling Emo–The Anguish of Clonehenge!

photo from the maths department at the University of Arkansas

Someone said to us recently, “You must love Stonehenge replicas!” Haha! *bitter laugh* Let’s get this straight–there is probably no one in the world as tired of Stonehenge replicas as we are! How could they be? We’re the only ones who look at them all the time, search for them, judge them, read about them…

We mention this because we could hardly get ourselves to do this post. Mankind’s desire to make new Stonehenges grows and grows, but our will to chronicle them, frankly, wanes. After all, there are 6 billion or so of you and only, well, one or two of us.

Click on any of these pictures to learn more about the replica depicted. We are far too busy with our anguish about how nobody truly understands us and nobody else perceives the world with our subtle aesthetic and metaphysical understandings or appreciates our artistic worldly view… alas and alack! We suddenly feel the world could do with more black Stonehenge replicas–to go with our clothes, our nails, our hair and our lips.

The one glimmer of hope in this dark business is the kids who continue to make their little Stonehenges with enthusiasm. Often they manage to do better than older people because they are innocent enough to actually look at Stonehenge and see that it’s not made up of rectangles and straight lines. Even when they do include straight lines, they’re likely to get the proportions and stone shapes closer to right.

Have we whined enough? No? Look at these shoes–we’ve only had them three weeks and the heels are worn right through! And anyway: global warming, governmental corruption, big corporations, joblessness, hunger, conspiracies, garbage in orbit, garbage in the oceans, bigots, deforestation, extinction of species, flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, Michele Bachmann, reality television, people who don’t use their turning lights, Twitter planning to put adverts RIGHT IN YOUR TWITTER STREAM without so much as a by-your-leave or an if-I-may, the revival of Clippy… It’s all too much!

Wait. . . .  You know what? We’re kind of feeling better now. That cheered us up. Or maybe it’s the fact that we’ve finished our post for the week. Either way we’re all smiles here. Time for a cat henge!

Awwwww! Cats make everything better. All is right with the world!

So until next time, friends, happy shiny henging!

Cheswardine: Another Long-Sought Henge Attained!

photo by Mia Robinson

Well, we survived the flood and gales. Many thanks to those who sent us good wishes, silent or otherwise. Irene let us live to henge another day.

We have long sought a picture of this little trilithon circle in Cheswardine, Shropshire. Looking at it, you may well ask, “Why?” but the fact is, once we know something like this is out there, we desire to list it, just as a collector wants that Mickey Mantle rookie card or that Black Lotus card, or any special little knick knack that completes a set. If there is a Stonehenge replica out there, we want it on Clonehenge!

We know very little about this one. Tinker, our photograph provider in this case says, “i recently moved to cheswardine and was thrilled when i randomly found the henge!!! i drove past it lots of times it wasnt until i stopped for the post box that i saw it as its hidden from the main road its on small ground next to a house but it is very lovely!!”

And a site on the interwebs says, “On our way back home we happened to pass through the Shropshire village of Cheswardine, and having spotted what looked like a miniature Stonehenge, we had to stop and photograph it. The structure is on the grass verge of a street called Symon’s Way, which leads off the main road through the village, and it is made of rough stone blocks. ”

As for score,we can’t give it more than 5 druids, charming as it is. Very cute, but not very Stonehenge-like. The ideal picture of this henge would include at least one cat. Possibly wearing a tie or hat.

The point of this post, however, is to laud, trumpet, and otherwise praise our alert reader and contributor for finding this henge in Cheswardine and sending us the picture! Well done, Tinker! If we gave out awards, we would send you one. Alas we do not, however. You will have to be content with the admiration of a grateful nation (the Henge Nation), and the not-inconsiderable honour of having made us happy. Well done, you!

We hate to post and run, but we watched Ancient Aliens last night and now are all worked up about mica at Teotihuacan, the stonework at Ollantaytambo, and the precise and symmetrical carving at Luxor.  So we are going to cut this post short and go do hours of pointless Googling which will lead us to countless flaky sites that all quote the same, probably dubious, source(s).  Oh, what fun!

We wonder when Ancient Aliens will get around to discussing the mystery of countless people building Stonehenge replicas around the world. Alien mind control?  I’m sure that the guy with the intense tan and weird hair is on task as we speak.  Stay tuned!!

And until then, happy henging!

Best Stonehenge Cupcakes Ever!

photo and henge by Carofine Design

Until we saw these cupcakes we did not think it possible to do a good cupcake Stonehenge. But this–this is outstanding! Unsurprisingly, it was made in the Stonehenge State, in what could well be the Stonehenge replica capital of the world, Seattle Washington, the city we want to live in.

What makes this good? The green icing, grey stones, correct or nearly correct proportions, even stone shaping and texturing. What else, class? Yes, that is right–the inner trilithon horseshoe faces the three lintel stretch in what remains of the outside circle. The only thing that would tempt us to subtract druids is that we were not offered a taste. Still, this is magnificent. Even the blue stones are included. The artist really looked at Stonehenge and tried to make this a true replica. We are impressed.

Score: 7½ druids or 9+ druid dwarfs. Well done!

That ends our speed posts for this week. If we should indeed perish, many many Stonehenge replicas would never get posted (unless some brave soul picked up the torch), and the world would probably be better for that. But chances are, next week we will be back trying your patience with more nonsense and tracking the Stonehenge-building virus as it ripples through the world population. Until then, fair folk, happy henging! And wish us luck.

Come on, Irene!

Coinhenge: The Role of Change

photo by John Shaw-Rimmington

Just sent in yesterday by friend of the blog John Shaw-Rimmington, the thinking stone man, dry stone walling genius, and blogger at Thinking With My Hands. You see, in the US and Canada banks hand out these variously-sized paper tubes to people who have large amounts of loose coin. The coin owner then fills the tubes with the correct sized coins. A roll of nickels, for example, is $2.00. A roll of pennies is 50 cents, and so on.

Mr. Shaw-Rimmington (you may remember his name from a strawhenge we posted some time ago) says on his blog (since none of you ever clicks links):

“My daughter has been collecting lots of her ( and ours, that we lent her ) change over the last few years and yesterday she wrapped it all. She thinks it’s hers now.

 The brown paper tubes when they’re neatly packed are remarkably heavy and feel like they want to be stacked somehow.

 So I made a little free-standing coin circle. Or would that be a high priced one?

 I will call it Coinhenge perhaps? I think that I had the Clonehenge site in mind when I made it.” See how he added that bit about us in order to avoid being castigated for his terrible puns?

He goes on: “It’s not in mint condition I know but it still might be worth depositing inside a bank (a kind of monetary earthworks site?) I wonder if the early builders of any kind of similar coinhenge ever ‘with-druid’ when ancient times got tough?”

Aargh! *strangled groan* The bun is the lowest form of wheat, if you get our drift. However this is the perfect henge for these times of change. Hurhur. We award it 6 druids, one whole druid of which is due strictly to John’s longstanding friendship with this blog. Please, if anyone is considering hiring him to do drystone work, we assure you that his expertise and art in that field are far superior to his pun-making and henging! He does beautiful work.

Spamhenge–May Last Longer Than the Original!

photo by Jedimentat44 on Flickr

This is not the only spamhenge, but it is a famous spamhenge, famous enough to have been a clue on the television game show Jeopardy. Yes, that’s right–Alex Trebek broached the esoteric topic of Stonehenge replicas on his show one fateful night! And we heard it.

Considering it is a spamhenge, it is rather well done. The stone shapes are correctly proportional and they have aimed the opening of the inner trilithon horseshoe toward the three lintel stretch in the outer circle. That counts for a lot as we said last week. We give this 7  druids, partly for the choice of material. Odd materials are in the Clonehenge tradition!

We believe this was created for the 7th Annual Chicago Spam Sculpture Contest. Which raises a lot of questions in itself. But on to our next Speedpost©!

Cornwall World in Miniature Replica: A Clonehenge Speed post

photo by Lizard-Lady

OMG! We have a hurricane headed straight for us! This made us stop and think–what if we perished? What Stonehenge replicas would we be most sorry about not posting? A few came to mind, so today instead of doing a long post, we’ll do a few short ones. This is a long-sought miniature Stonehenge that we saw a picture of when we first started out, a picture that did not say where this was. We finally know this is part of another park full of miniature world landmarks and buildings, Miniature World, formerly Miniatura Park, in Cornwall. The park is now closed, but people are working to reopen it to tourists.

We can’t see this replica well enough to judge it, but it looks like a 7½ druid circle, give or take a half druid. Not sure why, but we like that it’s on the little hill. Yay! Finally posted it.

 

Woolhenge: At First We Weren’t Sure How We Felt About It

photo by Thea on Etsy

Ooh, ha ha ha! First we have to catch our breath from laughing at our clever title. I’m sure that’s why we’re alone all of the time–people are afraid they would die laughing because of how funny we are.

Anyway, apparently there is this. When you think Stonehenge replica, it’s true that you don’t think of wool right away as a suitable material, but there is a certain logic to it. So many people who go to Stonehenge end up taking at least one picture of sheep, or making a joke about the sheep henge that is set up right near the stone henge. Sheep are very much a part of the Stonehenge experience.

The Etsy page says, “…what you see here is a model of Stonehenge depicted in wool, I used photographs from a book and my own pictures to try and depict many of the rocks’ crevices. The real Stonehenge is 24 feet (7.3 m) tall and made of stone but the tallest of these stones is 2.5 inches (3.5 cm) tall and made of wool, so it’s lightweight and portable.

 These “stones” are hand-sculpted and made out of eco-friendly North Ronaldsay wool (from British sheep that eat mainly seaweed). They are made using a technique called needle felting where I sculpt wool into a solid form using a little barbed needle and comes in a box, ready for gifting.”

We have to enter the modern world, we know, and get used to things like seeing the word gift used as a verb. But once we’re past that there are the sheep who eat mainly seaweed to distract us. Visions of aquatic sheep arise, with webbed hooves and gills, herds of them bobbing on the waves like rubber duckies… Does this have to do with the Japanese radiation? No? Too soon?

But the part we need to focus on here is “I used photographs from a book and my own pictures to try and depict many of the rocks’ crevices.” Not only has she taken care to place the stones roughly as they stand today (inner trilithon horseshoe facing the three consecutive extant lintels. We look for that in a replica), but she noticed their shapes and made a stab at that as well. We believe we recognise the individual stones in the second picture above. That is rather advanced for a very small replica. We also note that she nowhere mentions druids! Well done.

All in all, a superior small replica. Score: 7 druids. Although as Faithful Reader Simon Burrow pointed out, we should almost have a separate category of druid for the small henges, which tend to be scored lower just because they’re small. Okay, Simon, this would get 8½ druid dwarves! And a spell of transmutation. No, no. This is not an RPG. Yet.

Wool–another material added to the list, taking us ever closer to Rule 34S. If you think of some odd new way or place to make a Stonehenge replica, let us know. And until then, friends, happy henging!

Keeping Cool in Hotlanta–Stonehenge Sculpture AND Fountain

photo by Simon Burrow, used with permission

One of our highly paid and intensively trained henge-spotters* was on duty in Atlanta Georgia recently and spotted this Stonehenge sculpture fountain, entitled Stonehenge 2000. Unfortunately we know very little else about it.

It was created by Blood, Sweat, and Steel sculpture shop, under the leadership of an Alex H. with the help of someone named either Chip or Dan, who now works at Etowah Iron Works. Who commissioned it and why the reference to Stonehenge is a mystery. If any readers know or find further information about it, please write to us or put it in the comments so we can add it to the post!

Stonehenge sculptures are not unusual. People who do large sculptures seem to use Stonehenge as a sort of fall-back idea. Stonehenge fountains are not so easy to find. Offhand we can think of the Notre Dame fountain, one of the sculptures at Caelum Moor in Texas, the one at Falling Water Designs in Monroe, Washington, and possibly the odd Stonehenge in Mountain View California, although we’ still don’t know about that one.

And then there’s that Waterfall fountain trilithon we posted that time–probably better forgotten. But why make a Stonehenge fountain at all, one might ask. Just one of those mysteries of the human mind, we suppose. Someone thinking, “Stonehenge is brilliant, but it would have been perfect if it were a water feature!” A surprising number of hengers feel deep down that they could do better than Stonehenge’s original builders.

Stonehenge 2000 has two curved and unusually shaped trilithons standing in water. It isn’t actually much like Stonehenge, is it? Score: 4½ druids. That extra half is for naming it after Stonehenge. (Please note: this is not a score judging it as a sculpture or as a piece of public art. We strongly approve of Stonehenge-related public sculpture! This score only judges its qualities as a Stonehenge replica. And let’s face it–not so much.)

Before we go, we’re going to throw in another Stonehenge-related sculpture that has been lurking on our backlog list for a long time: Toronto’s Gateway to Understanding. The text on a Flickr page showing a picture of it reads, “The Gateway to Understanding, Harbourfront, Toronto, ON. To commemorate the Earth Spirit Festival held in July 1991. Through dialogue and cultural exchange, tolerance and understanding awaken within us. This structure will stand tall and bold as a symbol of the earth spirit. By David Ruben Piqtoukun.” He is an Inuit artist and we get the sense he is using the trilithon form for its portal/gate qualities more than as a Stonehenge replica, but we thought it deserved a mention. And we like the idea of the rough stone trilithon as a symbol of the earth spirit. That may be what that grey original huddled on Salisbury Plain was all about, (even if it was longing for some water to be pumped through it!).

There are more Stonehenge sculptures and we may get to more of them over time. For now we will be pondering whether to add these two to the list of Large Permanent Replicas. Input is welcome, but we will probably at least add the Atlanta fountain one of these days when we’re feeling less lazy.

And, of course, in the meantime, friends, happy henging!

*Or– maybe it was friend of the blog Simon Burrow stumbling across it on an unrelated business trip…despite all the money we waste on those henge spotters!