Tag Archives for cardboard stonehenge

How Can You Bring Stonehenge into Your Life? Let Us Help.

photo from daddytypes.com

So many people wonder (apparently), “How can I bring Stonehenge into my life?” Luckily for them, there are so many ways! Above you see Muji’s Mysteries in a Bag, a small wooden set that includes not just Stonehenge but a pyramid, the Sphinx, the Parthenon, Nessie, one o the Nazca line drawings, and, oh yes!, Easter Island heads or moai. Moai, despite coming from the other side of the world, are associated with Stonehenge replicas with alarming frequency.

We quote daddytypes.com‘s comments, “Forget Stonehenges in danger of being crushed by a dwarf; now you can have a Stonehenge in danger of being swallowed by a toddler. [And yeah, it’s worth noting that all these things have small-to-tiny pieces. Personally, I worry less about easy-to-swallow than I do about choke hazard, but either way, heads up.]” We see the tiresome crushed by a dwarf reference all the time, this fellow used it well, in our (not so) humble opinion.

Another way to acquire a Stonehenge for your home or business can be found on Amazon (what can’t?). This piece is advertised as a “StoneHenge 180cms Lifesize Cardboard Cutout” but, let’s face it, 180 cm is not half the height of the shortest sarsens and this is just a trilithon. (StoneHenge–capitalisation of that H grates a little, doesn’t it?) The most striking thing about this Stonehenge is the £34.99 price for cardboard, even if it is “photo-quality” and has a “fold-out strut to the rear, which means its entirely self supporting”. Not everyone who has a strut to the rear is entirely self supporting…

This is another children’s Stonehenge, this time produced with the help of someone who actually knows something about Stonehenge, Mr. Julian Richards (We’ve mentioned him before, here. This is a clever book with good information to help you introduce your child, or someone else’s, to Stonehenge. (It almost hurts us when something is too good to make fun of.)

And this is a resin Stonehenge trilithon replica, 8 cm high and painted to look, not like stone, but, curiously, like metal. We spotted it on ebay some time ago, but its time has since expired. Striking looking.

No scores in this post. We’re just biding our time until our reader in New Jersey sends us the photograph we’re waiting for. We also have a nice pinhole picture Stonehenge model, complete with parking lot, in the works. People are making Stonehenge replicas much faster than we can post them.

Other ways to bring Stonehenge into your life, of course, many of which we have posted here in the past, include pre-made and make-it-yourself models, jewellery, cakes, small garden henges, photographs and more, including, of course, subscribing to Clonehenge or following it on Twitter or Facebook. When we remember we post a foodhenge to Twitter on Fridays.

There you have it. We managed to cop out and strike 4 items off our lengthening list at one blow. Someone recently told us that they think numbers of Stonehenge replicas will increase faster as we approach December 2011.  We need a young padawan. Does anyone want to send us their child to have him or her learn the Stonehenge-replica-posting trade? Calling for a Clonehenge apprentice! We promise to pay as much as we pay ourselves.

The New Jersey photo has just come in. Look for it next week. Until then, as always, happy henging!

Ohio’s Earthworks and Stonehenge for a Day

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Miller Elementary in Ohio, creating ‘Cardboard Stonehenge’ © Ray Picton 2006

It’s a big week for the Newark Earthworks Center in Newark, Ohio. A pilgrimage (Walk with the Ancients) is taking place along a long-lost 60 mile road that runs straight as an arrow across the Ohio landscape, to end at the Newark Earthworks, the largest geometric earthworks complex in the world, with a day of celebration. We’re so glad to see this amazing site and its native builders getting notice. We lived there for a short time 20 years ago and couldn’t believe it wasn’t internationally famous. Maybe its time has come.

Newark_map

(our own photo–please ask permission) This is a partial map of the original earthworks at Newark, Ohio. The Great Circle is in the center at the top.

So how can that tie in with Stonehenge replicas? It’s more likely than you think! And that is because of one Ray Picton, whose Newark/Stonehenge story can be seen here. He wound up in a Fulbright teacher exchange that took him from Salisbury, England to Newark Ohio. Inspired by Stonehenge and the amazing site at Newark, he and his exchange teacher had their primary school classes do comparative studies of the sites. And of course for the classes in Ohio this inevitably meant Stonehenge replicas.

Apparently many were made, but we could only find photos of this unique effort in which students went out o the lawn with large pieces of cardboard and created a Stonehenge replica formation. (Why couldn’t we have done things like this when we were in school?!!!?) Needless to say we love Mr. Picton’s picture at the top. What a great effort!

The Ohio students became more aware of the significance of the site in their own community. Meanwhile children in Salisbury, too, were learning about the amazing earthworks at Newark as well as their own great monument.

Having been at Stonehenge and Avebury and Newark, we can tell you that there is a striking simlarity especially between Avebury and one part of the Newark complex called the Great Circle. In fact the Great Circle qualifies as a henge in the strict sense, which involves ditches and banks rather than stones. It’s not as large as Avebury, of course, but it is a sizable circle with a mound in the middle, presumably for ceremony. When we lived there, native wildflowers bloomed on the grounds within the circle in  spring.

We heartily applaud Mr. Picton’s successful efforts “to embed the comparative study of the two sites into the curriculum at both schools.” This shows what a difference one person can make. And we cannot leave the topic of the Newark Earthworks without mentioning Dr. Brad Lepper who has been involved at Newark since we lived there and heard him speak many years ago.  It is largely by his work that the road of pilgrimage being walked this week was discovered.

Score? Are you kidding? We award the rare 9 druids to this living Stonehenge made of cardboard and children. We know that in recent news people have been complaining that some awards are given undeservedly, but we think that work that gives hope and paints a better future for our children deserves the highest rewards of all!

P.S.: Newark Earthworks Day is this Saturday, October 17, 2009. If you can be there, we highly recommend it!

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3D Paper Model Stonehenge (and a small mystery solved)

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photo from Paper Landmarks promotional webpage

We may not get to post for a day or two, so a quick post this morning. You may remember some time ago we posted a page of links to replicas we didn’t have photo permissions for, Henges We Admire. One of them was a neatly done model of Stonehenge in its original state, which  we thought was of wood. It now appears that it may have been of paper, made from this kit. (For those who might enjoy horrifying the Clonehenge blog, this company also sells kits for Easter Island heads to add to your Stonehenge display!)

Of course, we aren’t looking at anything like the stone-by-stone detail of the Cardboard Stonehenge kit shown on the Cardboard Stonehenge blog, a great read featured here earlier. At the other end of the spectrum is this (to us) humourous item, in which you just cut out all but the base of the ‘stones’ and stand them up, made by a company with the evocative name L’Instant Durable. Ah, if only it were!

Still, this is an impressive model and if we’d had one we might have kept busy making it and avoided the embarrassment of starting Clonehenge. Alas for the world–one annoyance that might so easily have been averted!

Paper Landmarks‘ Stonehenge score: 7½ druids. Note that you can get it in several colours including gold, although why you wouldn’t choose the stone colour is beyond us. Unless you were just going to set it on fire anyway. In that case, do it safely! And send us pictures!

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Dating with Stonehenge

dating-stonehenge

henge and picture by Blake Meyer, completely without permission

Okay, it’s late on Valentine’s Day. A certain someone is crashed out and we may or may not have had a lovely Beaujolais with a bit of chocolate. We have been waiting to hear from this henger for a long time,  possibly an absent blogger of a long-dead blog. We hereby break our own rules and repost without permission. A request from the blogger will delete this post.

In the meantime, here’s an  interesting replica of unknown inspiration. The post says: “ . . I cut the large pieces of cardboard (courtesy of the dining common) into the correct shapes and I folded and duct-taped large crinkled pieces of paper on a few of them . . . Then I spray-painted the Stonehenges (I did buy the paint), and stapled them to scrap wood from stage for stability. And VOILA! STONEHENGES! They were a big hit at the outing and now they reside as decoration in my room.” And he’s right–that Erika is cute!

Bravo, Blake! Your mysterious “Stonehenges” are a hit with us! Score: 7 druids for a bl***y good job making a Stonehenge out of scraps just lying around! We hope you have gone on to larger, more permanent replicas, and that you’ve hung on to the lovely Erika!

Cardboard Stonehenge, the blog

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photos from Cardboard Stonehenge, taken by Soo Martin

It’s a whole world we never dreamed existed, the world of the cardmodel kit. Moduni.com offers a great many of them, along with other kinds of models for building. Two people, Alan A. and Soo Martin, who work for a British archives service bought a Stonehenge cardmodel kit, decided to build it during their lunch breaks, and, to our good fortune, chose to blog about it for over 3 months as they did. The results are remarkable, as shown by the pictures above and below.

goodbye

(Is that the bunch from Fathers 4 Justice? Love the hat on the left!)

It’s not easy to make this post short, even more than with some other subjects we’ve tackled. We urge anyone with an informed interest in megaliths and Stonehenge to read the blog. It’s short. Many interesting points are made and musings noted, all in a mood of bemused fascination. Take, for example, their Meditations on Underground Access. These are people who have spent too much time thinking about sacred sites. Unlike us. Heh heh.

Anyway, scoring this one is difficult. This blog, with its interim models of glaciers moving  bluestones and of the Stonehenge underpass, with the taping off of the center stones by the Lego constabulary for solstice, with office leylines drawn, and photoshopped lines showing the forms said to be visible in the stones, etc., has completely bowled us over and it’s all we can do to keep from looking sappy by giving it a 9 ¾. It’s a manufactured model, for Sol ‘s sake! After a very cold shower, we give it eight Lego druids . . . maybe 8 ¾! Okay, someone click on Publish, quick!