CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) - For the time being, Tom Allan has two dioramas stored in his garage that show an iconic place and an event from the American Revolutionary War.
The three-dimensional scene of Valley Forge is more exact in detail than the actual historic site in Pennsylvania attracting more than 2 million visitors a year. The other tableau, based on Tom Lovell’s painting “The Noble Train of Artillery,” shows patriots and oxen muscling sleds carrying heavy canons through a valley of deep snow.
A few miles from Allan’s Albemarle County home, another diorama, this one depicting the pivotal Battle of Trenton, is in the process of being created by master diorama builder Bret Jones in his Rail Tales hobby shop. Jones also built the other two dioramas, and all three will be donated to the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, which opens to the public on April 19.
“We are so excited about the dioramas that Tom and Bret have developed and built for donation to the new museum,” said R. Scott Stephenson, vice president of collections, exhibitions and programming at the museum. “We are using every exhibit storytelling technique at our disposal, from engaging media and digital interactives to immersive environments and artifact-rich displays to bring the story of our nation’s founding to life.
“This includes the use of dioramas and life-cast museum figures to recreate people and events. Tom and Bret have brought tremendous dedication and artistry to the three scenes.
“We will use these dioramas in a variety of programs. They will rotate on display in a family friendly, hands-on discovery center in our lower level. And they will be mounted on carts that will allow program staff to move them to various places in the building to engage visitors in our public and exhibit spaces.”
Allan’s longtime interest in high-quality military miniatures led to the creation of the three scenes. Central to each diorama are brightly uniformed soldiers that serve to give an element of life and action to the realistic settings.
“As a kid, I was pushing miniature soldiers around on the floor until I got to be 13 or 14,” said Allan, who has donated all the tiny soldiers, materials, assorted buildings and sundry pieces featured in the displays. “When I went away to boarding school, I gave them to my younger brothers.
“After I retired, I found these one-inch-high miniatures being made by a company by the name of Dixon. They sold them unpainted, but they had good definition.
“Most of the figures I have now are from a company called King and Country, and they come already painted. It’s my interest in history more than anything that makes this interesting for me. It’s bringing into three dimension things that I read about in books.”
Through the years, Allan amassed thousands of miniature soldiers, many of which are from the Napoleonic era. As he approached his 80th birthday, he started thinking about providing good homes for the wee characters.
These are certainly not the plastic figures sold for a few bucks a bag. The miniatures in Allan’s armies are meticulously hand painted and exquisitely detailed, and they provide a satisfying heft when laid in the palm of a hand.
“I collected thousands of miniatures,” Allan said. “I don’t want someone to push them into a box and not know what to do with it.
“It’s not easy to sell them, or find anybody to take them. So I bought some display cabinets and donated more than 4,000 figures to the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond.
“After meeting Scott Stephenson, I proposed to do some dioramas related to the Revolutionary War for the new museum.”
Stephenson earned his doctorate in American history at the University of Virginia. He also served as Monticello’s archaeologist.
“One of our core values as a museum is to foster empathy for the difficult decisions and uncertain outcomes that people from a diverse range of backgrounds faced during the Revolutionary era,” Stephenson said. “Exhibit elements like the dioramas help us to personalize those situations and characters, especially for younger visitors.”
The diorama of the train of artillery depicts a critical action during the early months of the American Revolution. In the spring of 1775, American troops forced the British to surrender Fort Ticonderoga in northern New York.
The capture of the fort put 59 pieces of artillery into the patriots’ hands. Gen. George Washington desperately needed the cannons, and a young American officer, Henry Knox, hatched a plan to get them to the high ground outside Boston.
Knox’s idea called for the heavy cannons to be dismantled and transported 300 miles through wilderness, and across rivers and lakes. To accomplish this, 40 special sleds, 80 yoke of oxen and an array of flat-bottomed boats were marshaled into use.
When this diorama is on view in the Philadelphia museum, it will give visitors a strong sense of the suffering men and beasts endured in order to accomplish a daunting feat that many of Washington’s officers thought was impossible. The arrival of the cannons outside Boston in early March 1776 forced the British to retreat.
Fort Knox in Kentucky is named in honor of the brave officer whose leadership and perseverance helped win the war. The diorama provides a bird’s-eye view of what that Herculean endeavor involved.
“I think the thing that’s most important about these dioramas is that children will see them,” Allan said. “This is something they can get their teeth into.
“I’ve been told that it’s the kids who get their parents to bring them back to the War Memorial in Richmond to see the miniature soldiers.
“This actually started with me buying a few model cabins with which to build a diorama of Valley Forge. Then I found Bret, who does unbelievable things with dioramas. He actually went to Valley Forge at his own expense to research the cabins. You can see the difference between those that I bought and the ones that are now in the diorama.”
Jones started building models when he was a youngster. He got interested in building dioramas after being inspired by the work of Howard Sheperd “Shep” Paine, who was instrumental in popularizing military miniatures and diorama building.
“By the time I got into high school, I was fairly serious about creating dioramas,” Jones said. “I was lucky to have a mentor who was an expert at this, and he showed me how to do better techniques.
“The first thing you start with when doing a diorama is research - and then more research. Most dioramas that are done are from 1939 through modern times, and are military dioramas of tanks and soldiers.
“There are those who do dioramas with aircraft, and others create fantasy dioramas. But the vast majority are what we call ’a tank and a setting.’”
Accuracy is a key component of Jones’ dioramas. That made Allan’s purchased cabins unusable, but resulted in a scene that is historically spot-on.
“I met with the historian and archeologist at Valley Forge, and we talked extensively,” Jones said. “What I was told was that everything you think you know about Valley Forge is wrong, and everything that’s there for the public to see is incorrect.
“The cabins that are there are made from redwood and shingled with modern cedar shingles. Neither of these woods (was) available to the original builders. The cabins now on site were done very professionally, whereas the originals were made with crude tools.
“The original shingles would have been split oak, and much larger than shingles today. The placement of the cabins (is) for the convenience of visitors and re-enactors - not as they were originally laid out, so that the soldiers could get to the defensive lines easily.”
Jones’ en situ research is reflected in handmade cabins built by modeler Gary Whistleman, who lives in Stuarts Draft. He is also responsible for creating from scratch superbly crafted trees that appoint each of the dioramas.
“My mentor is standing beside me,” Whistleman said of Jones. “I retired a few years ago, and when Bret asked me to work on a piece with him, we clicked.
“Bret is a perfectionist, and he wants everything exactly perfect. This has been a wonderful hobby for me.
“Years ago I built in my basement a huge diorama of a train traveling through the middle of a Civil War battle. There were hundreds of figures, each of which I hand painted. I had a house being blown up by a cannonball, troops going through a cornfield and all kinds of things going on. It took me years to build.”
Whistleman offered the diorama to Virginia Tech, but it was too large for the school to accommodate. Ultimately, the figures, train and buildings were removed and the landscape sledge hammered into pieces.
The three dioramas that will be transported carefully to Philadelphia in a few months won’t suffer a similar fate. Quality craftsmanship will ensure that they will be studied and admired for generations.
The Battle of Trenton scene currently under construction shows a phase of the engagement that occurred on Dec. 26, 1776. The scene is based on the painting “Battle of Trenton” by H. Charles McBarron Jr.
The battle in the New Jersey town was a resounding victory for the Americans and led to the capture of nearly 1,000 Hessian soldiers. A few dozen Hessian miniatures with their hands in the air are shown surrendering to Washington.
Allan had the miniature POWs specially made, as well as American cavalrymen with the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry. This famous unit sported especially ornate uniforms and often served as Washington’s personal bodyguard.
On the night the Americans crossed the Delaware River to surprise the enemy in its winter camp, the boats transporting the cavalry unit weren’t able to reach the far shore. Undeterred, riders and horses splashed into the black water and swam between chunks of drift ice to reach land. During the 45-minute battle, the drenched cavalrymen likely warmed up a bit during a savage confrontation they had with Hessian troops holed up in a barn.
Each of the dioramas shows a small part of a bigger story. The hope is that they will spark enough interest in individuals that they will do further research into these fascinating places and events.
“I feel really lucky to be doing this for a living,” Jones said. “This is the most research I’ve done for a project in a long time, so it has been quite a learning experience for me.
“Normally, we’re modeling railroads where we’re just making something that looks good for people to enjoy. These three dioramas are a different sort of animal.”
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Information from: The Daily Progress, https://www.dailyprogress.com
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