Museums

NHM: THE FANTASTIC BEASTS EXHIBITION

In 2018 we won our first competitive tender to supply the Natural History Museum with models for a major exhibition ‘Fantastic Beasts: The Wonder of Nature’. We made a Hungarian Horntail Dragon from the film ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ (click on images to expand):

We made a replica of the Mermaid stained glass window from the Prefects’ bathroom at Hogwarts and a Mooncalf from the film ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’:

We also made an interactive audio-visual display of the Niffler’s cave with its hoard of treasure spilling out. The hoard contains specific illuminated objects which, when touched, trigger a related piece of animation of the Niffler on the screen at the back of the display:

ThE Titanosaurus exhibition

In 2022 The Natural History Museum commissioned Mangostone to make a series of replicas of fossilised objects with the additional requirement that they should be ‘touch objects’ and be robust enough to be handled and felt by visitors to the exhibition.

The objects were scanned and then 3D printed, then moulded and cast out in pigmented jesmonite. The colouring is contained within the material, rather than as a surface coating and so it doesn’t rub off. Final artworking was done with dilute colour washes that only leave residue in the tiny fissures and grooves of the object, revealing the detail from the original that the 3D scanning and printing has faithfully reproduced:

1. Titanosaurus Egg 2. Tree Fern  3. Petrified Wood 4. Horsetail Fern   5. Araucaria Cones

The being brunel museum

The Being Brunel Museum in Bristol features a re-creation of Brunel's office in Duke Street, Westminster as it was in the 1840s. We were commissioned to reproduce three classical busts which Brunel had on display, depicting Mark Brunel (his father), 2nd Earl Spencer and Thomas Telford. The busts were sculpted in clay, moulded in silicone and cast in Jesmonite:

We also created this pendant light, an authentic copy of the one that hung in Brunel's office:

In the display part of the Museum, we designed and built two mechanical interactives, set into drawers:

In one, Brunel crosses the Avon Gorge in a basket on a cable (he gets stuck half-way - we used a magnetic device).

In another, Brunel's thoughts are shown twirling in a bubble activated by means of a wooden wheel in an illusion known as a thaumatrope.

This display is designed to illustrate the origins of the SS Great Britain crew: