Richard Adshead -  British Artist and Model maker (1919- 2003).         By his son Chris Adshead.

Throughout my childhood I remember my Dad's passion for model making and painting, along with real sailboats and trains, especially narrow gauge trains. Car trips with him were always a time for learning, I learnt such important things as the difference between a clinker built dinghy and a hard chine dingy, and why people referred to a locomotive as a 4-6-2 or a 2-4-0 (it's the arrangement of its wheels). I marvelled at Dad's fascination with detail and it was this attention to detail that made his work so special.

He went into a "working retirement"  in his 50's and moved to Templecombe, Somerset where he started to get serious about his artwork. He painted, sketched and created some amazing models. In June 1977 he had his first big exhibition.

There is a wonderful nostalgic feel to his watercolours, whether it is an industrial scene from the 1930's in the British Midlands, a fishing boat sailing off the Cornish coast, a Cotswolds village in the 1920's or one of the wonderful buildings in the gardens of Stourhead.

His models were mainly of boats and ships of various sizes and scales, along with narrow gauge railway subjects.  But, there were also models of follies (an ornamental building with no practical purpose) and architectural models of buildings. Here again his incredible detail made all of these items unique and sought after by collectors and businesses.

Click here to check out the galleries on this site and I hope you enjoy his work too.