Service Description

The Porter is an essential stock character and one of my favourite figures in the 1001 Nights. His is an excellently juicy and salacious tale. He has access-all-areas and sees all and knows all. Builders and bricklayers also carry things from place to place. Here we see early Persian-inspired Mughal then later Mughal as well as Ottoman-style paintings, all with the carrying theme. The Levni and Vehbi-inspired fictional Procession of the Guilds continues the TALES masterclass series of characterless characters, our band of everyman figures with a tale to tell and a profession, an occupation or a vice (!) to emblazon on their little bodies which hold big stories. Borne from a desire to present a truly comprehensive picture of all miniature painting, and emerging from my latest ongoing research into the world of the 1001 Arabian Nights, these classes are like a cabinet of curiosities for miniature painting. The TALES classes comprise 3 strands: Objects and Ingenious Devices, Natural Marvels and Wonders and Characterless Characters. If, like me, you find stories and marvels irresistible, join me in painting a collection of marvels, wonders, everyday objects, theatrical devices, mechanical ingenuity, strangenesses and curios… in short, THINGS that are in stories and paintings and that are not easily defined as animal, vegetable or mineral. Cooking pots, cups and jugs; tables, takhts and thrones. From flags and bows and arrows and a multitude of tools to clever clocks, musical instruments and astrolabes, we cover them all. Humans have found wonder in the tiniest fleas and the wide open seas and the far flung stars (and now we’re going to Mars). These things are the stuff of stories, the razm o bazm (fight and feast) of the Shahnameh and the magic everyday fabric that is the stock in trade of the Nights. The other stock in trade of the Nights is of course the people that populate them. Moving from faces to FIGURES: the stock characters, or ‘characterless characters’ as I describe them, are just that: 2D characters that represent an occupation or trade. Gossip and the guilds. People’s jobs define their surnames. The most beautiful of princesses, the basest of slaves. The vilest, the meanest, the cruellest; the most generous, the most princely and the most magnanimous. The most judging of judges and kingliest of kings. The Sailoriest of Sailors and the Merchantiest of Merchants. All clichés are here...