About Essdale
 
The "Essdale" name comes from Sandra Dale ("S Dale"), the creator of all the models. She has never had any formal Arts training, but can reasonably claim to have always been quite a 'crafty' person. The sculpting side of her abilities came to light on the encouragement of a friend and fellow artist at the Craft Fairs about 12 years ago and, once discovered, she has never stopped sculpting since!

She started making little models of people as 'professions', e.g. Fireman, Policeman, Butcher etc in year 2000, having been making a variety of other ornamental craft items over the previous 10 years.

Gradually, bits of 'personalising' (e.g. hair colour, moustaches, etc) started to be built into each model, until she decided that what people really wanted was a model that looked as much like the 'subject' as possible.

Since then she has specialised in sculpting individual commissions from people's own photographs and ideas. Sandra finds great enjoyment and satisfaction in this work, as every model she makes is competely different, and they all come with a certain amount of 'story' behind them. They are as individual as all the people in the world! (and she remembers every one she's made, which by now is quite a few!). She often gets 'feedback' from customers (a note, or a phone call etc) to say how pleased they are with the finished model. She really loves those!

Sandra is pictured, above, in the 'Modelling Workshop' (a conversion of the back bedroom of the family home).

The models have gradually become more & more detailed as Sandra has taught herself new techniques etc to improve the likeness. The only drawback to this process has been that the models have also gradually come to take more & more time to make! Where,in the early days, she would perhaps make 5 or 6 models a week this has gradually dropped, such that now just a single model can take the majority of a week to complete!