Lego Santa and reindeer land in Covent Garden
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Version 0 of 1. As in so many households across the land, the aftermath of the arrival of Santa’s sleigh was scattered pieces of coloured plastic needing to be picked up and put back in their proper place. In this case, they needed to be carefully glued back into position among the 700,000 Lego bricks making up the full-size sleigh, nine reindeer, sack of presents and the man in red, which have landed in Covent Garden in London. “We’ve packed a few spare antlers too, just in case,” Duncan Titmarsh said. The sleigh and its crew were designed and built by a team led by Titmarsh, who has one of those jobs career guidance teachers never mention: he is one of just 13 accredited full-time Lego professional builders in the world. He had to break off work on the sleigh over the weekend to install a Lego Christmas tree in Poland – a comparatively easy task, since unlike the world record 12.2m (40ft) one he built in St Pancras station in 2011 the Polish one, and those already in place in Hungary and the Czech Republic, stand a mere 8m tall. Like all their most complicated pieces, the sleigh began life as a drawing converted through a computer program into a 3D diagram which roughly shows how to shape it in tiny plastic bricks. Human ingenuity is still needed to create the modelling, particularly of curving pieces like the raised hooves of the reindeer. After horrible early experiences of trying to lift half-tonne pieces by hand, they now build on to steel pallets which can be moved with a fork-lift truck. Titmarsh got his first Lego set at the age of four, and was instantly hooked, an obsession that lasted until he discovered girls in his teens. He was married and working as a kitchen fitter when, on an outing with his wife, Sharon, he spotted a set he hadn’t seen before in a shop window. “Why don’t you buy it?” she said nobly – and life changed for ever. Can he remember which set rekindled the obsession? He looks bemused at the foolish question: it was the Technic Helicopter No 8825. He joined a local adult Lego modellers’ club and was soon being asked to make special pieces for birthdays and presentations until more Lego than kitchen work was coming in. He took the giant decision – backed by his magnificent wife – to turn professional. Fortunately he didn’t need a loan, so didn’t have to explain the project to a bank manager. “I had just about enough stock in the shed to get me started,” he explained, “a few million bricks or so”. He now keeps around 7m in stock, stacked up to the ceiling in the awesomely tidy workshop, buying them in – he gets a discount rate, but does have to buy the bricks – 500,000 at a time. He now employs 15 full-time staff, and as many again in the final build stage of major projects like the sleigh. Almost all, along with his business partner, Ed Diment – who gave up his job as a management consultant in the City to join the company – came from the same modelling club. He and Diment are well-matched: Titmarsh likes building long, straight stretches using the classic 8x2 peg bricks, Diment likes twiddly bits. Initially the business occupied a small workshop on an industrial estate in Hampshire, but soon had to move to a much larger one. Now that it holds items including a 500,000-piece mosaic portrait of a wealthy family which soon has to be shipped to Italy, a gigantic model of the Queen Mary which Diment is working on personally, and a sabre-toothed tiger which has come back in from a museum for a few running repairs, they’re considering taking on a second warehouse. Being approved by Lego involved submitting examples of his work and being interviewed to make quite sure he was made of the right stuff. The Danish company originally made wholesome wooden toys, and the name is a shortened Danish phrase meaning “play well”. He knows the other 12 builders, including the New York-based Nathan Sawaya, whose exhibition of Lego sculptures is currently in London as part of a world tour. They all meet regularly at conferences: the most recent was in Singapore, the one before that in the US. It is, he agrees, quite a long way from life as a kitchen fitter. The sleigh is the first piece they’ve built that people are officially welcome to climb on to; you can sit in the sleigh beside the great man to have your picture taken – hence the spare parts kit they’re sending with it. After a great deal of discussion in the workshop, Rudolph’s nose is red – but it doesn’t exactly glow. “We did talk about putting a bulb into it,” Titmarsh said, “but inevitably it was going to go at some point, and I was going to get a phone call at midnight on Christmas Eve to drive to London and fix it. So no, red but no glow.” |