photo from the aedes ars website, used with permission.

We should have held out for a bribe! For the first time in our two-plus years of folly, a company contacted us in advance to announce the release of a new Stonehenge model. Did we maximise? Did we monetise? No. We’re just doing another post for free, losers that we are.

The kit’s dimensions are listed as 280 x 280 x 70 mm., about 11 inches square, for those who think in old units. Pretty small. All of the 121 pieces are fine quality ceramic fired at 800° C.

We’re told by the people at Spanish manufacturer aedes ars, “The main work with this kit (different of the rest of our products) is to scrape the surface of the pieces to make them irregular and to let the clay colour mix appear in the surface.” So they’re going to some trouble to make the stones look suitably old and stony, always a good sign. They haven’t quite got their English right, but we don’t score on that. Our Spanish isn’t that great, either, a decir la verdad.

What we don’t know yet is how much it’s going to cost, but the company seems very proud of this Stonehenge model, as it is pictured on the cover of their latest catalogue. So, how shall we evaluate it? Our only other commercial clay Stonehenges, the models by Hawkes Nest in North Olmstead, Ohio, got 7 druids, but this one is a little finer, with better-shaped stones and a more professional look. Still, the Hawkes Nest models had a nice wood base…

We like sets you assemble yourself, though. Makes it easier to use for history class dioramas, etc. While the set is of the Stonehenge-as-it-is-imagined-to-have-looked-at-first variety, you could make a good stab at setting it up as it is now. That’s a plus! We like the current, disheveled look of the grey monster of Salisbury Plain better, all in all.

Score? We give it 8 druids. Nice set. Things that future model-makers can do better: 1) shape stones individually to match each real stone at Stonehenge, as they did in the exquisite cardboard Stonehenge, 2) include a larger baseboard with room for Aubrey holes and a heelstone, and more space so it doesn’t look so cramped, and 3) draw stone positions for the current state of the monument on the reverse side of the base material.

Now, for those thinking of contacting us with commercially available Stonehenges in like manner in the future: we figure we should get about €2000 per druid scored!  Or, you could just ask us politely like they did and we’ll probably do it for free. This is our mission: to demonstrate to the world the incredible rate at which Stonehenge is reproducing itself like a virus, using human minds as cells to incubate and create its young and thus to take over the world!!!1!

We don’t have to be paid to sing our siren of warning into the vastnesses of cyberspace. We just hope for a monument to be built to us after mankind realises the fate we’ve saved it from. We’re thinking of a nice linteled stone monument, about 33 meters across, surrounded by a circular earthwork…