January, 2016

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It’s a New Year, and there are some new additions to boxdioramas.com! First up, from the editors of the site on their gallery pages: as seen at the MMSI Chicago Show in October 2015, “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” the latest by yours truly, with accompanying step-by-step article, and “Thursday Evening,” the new one by Barry Biediger, which also has an accompanying article. And Darryl Audette has a new theater set, Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” featured on his gallery page, as well as on a new Web site of his own featuring all of his work.

Also seen at the Chicago show was Brian Duddy’s TV-box diorama “Kelly’s Heroes” (now featured on the Various Artists Newer Work page), and John Schley traveled all the way from Ireland to display two of the pieces featured on his gallery page, “A Fallen Empire” and “Some Had Nightmares.” We are happy to have several new gallery pages for artists who submitted their work or who we discovered on the Web: Anders Runnholm is a Swedish artist who does 1/35th-scale model railroad scenes as box dioramas; Mitsuo Kure is a miniaturist based in Tokyo who was inspired to try his hand at box dioramas by Shep Paine; Alan Wolfson did (and perhaps still does) amazing scenes of vintage New York street life, and the French artist Ronan-Jim Sevellec captured Bohemian Paris interiors in miniature. Finally, also on the archival tip, we have added images of a piece by Glynn Porteous that we hadn’t seen before to the Various Artists’ Older Work page, in addition to creating a veteran artist Gallery Page for Glenn Cunningham, who created several box dioramas of the Life of Christ for a museum in Florida.

As always, we appreciate your contributions, whether you’re sending us your own work or links to things you think would be of interest to builders and fans of box dioramas. Give a shout! And meanwhile, all the best in 2016.

June, 2015

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In addition to a stellar new design for the site (thank you, Kyle Hale!) and a new Web host (thanks, Squarespace.com!), we have a bevy of additions and updates to announce, starting with the latest box diorama from this site's Webmaster, Jim DeRogatis: "Harsh Awakening: Moscow, 1812," which has been added to my gallery page. You also can find a step-by-step feature article here. 

Next, we have added a new artist's gallery page for Scotte "Bricks" Turner from the D.C. area; he's a tattoo artist as well as a miniaturist, if any of you want to get some ink! Another new gallery page highlights the work of Japanese modeler Masahiro Fukaya; Shep Paine brought him to our attention--"We don't see many World War II boxes, or boxes from Japan, so I thought these might be of interest for the box diorama website," Shep noted--and, as usual, he was right. We'd love to hear more from Masahiro, if he sees this or if anyone knows him. Other boxes seen at recent shows include a beautifully displayed mini-box of the Hunchback of Notre Dame by Ken Hunt from MFCA 2015 and "Jesus and the Demon Possessed Man" by Andy Axtell, seen at the Tulsa show in 2015; both of these can be found on the Various Artists Newer Work page.

We have created a dedicated video page and added three new videos: "Dioramas from the Museum of Natural History, New York," "A Tribute to Shepard Paine," and "No Small Feat: Reimagining Howard Pyle's Work," all of which we think will be of interest to box diorama enthusiasts. These join the video we've had up for some time, "Fostering Creativity in the Hobby," a great panel discussion moderated by me and featuring Joe Berton, Fletcher Clement, and Shep Paine.

Finally, an the archival tip, our friend Joe Berton found a fascinating book about a series of 20 Lincoln box dioramas once on display at the Chicago Historical Society. The book came with full-page images of 14 of those boxes--we've scanned them and given them a gallery page here--and Joe is on the trail for more, including the boxes' current whereabouts, so stay tuned!

As always, we welcome your feedback and input. Send us your work! jimdero@jimdero.com

January, 2015

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January, 2015: Happy New Year, and welcome to a massive update of new material on this site! Starting off, we have several new box dioramas seen at the MMSI Chicago Show in October 2014: “Cave of the Storm Nymphs” (see Web site editor Jim DeRogatis’s gallery page as well as his step-by-step article); “Box #3” (see co-editor Barry Biediger’s gallery page as well as his step-by-step article), and “The Birth of the Hunley” by a modeler new to this site, Paul Burgess, who now has a fresh gallery page.
Jim also showed his diorama “Il Cenacolo” in Chicago, and subsequently added to the step-by-step article for that piece based on questions from other modelers. Still busy returning to school to study theater design, our site’s other co-editor Darryl Audette has completed several ¼”-scale models for his classes, all very much of interest to box diorama builders, and those have been added to his gallery page. Darryl also took the time out from his studies to write a making-of article on one of those projects, a tribute to Andy Warhol.


Next up, John Long has a new box to show, and he’s given us a short step-by-step on its creation; as promised during the last update in August 2014, we’ve collected some great pictures of the boxes built by Markus Eckmann of Scorpio Models (be sure to see his gallery page and his great step-by-step for “A Night at the Scriptorium” ); we have a new gallery page for New York artist Michael Scarborough, and Jack Lynch has finished reworking his diorama “The Homecoming,” which can be seen on his gallery page.


As part of a big project (more on that in a second), we’ve also added a lot of new images to the Various Artists, Newer Work page and the Various Artists, Older Work page, so be sure to check those out, too.
Several veteran modelers also have gotten expanded galleries; these include Dwight Franklin, Lewis Pruneau, Spencer Van Gulick, and Philip O. Stearns. These pages were created because we spent a lot of time over the holidays scanning in literally hundreds of images and articles from the entire run of back issues for Campaigns magazine, as well as many file copies of older issues of Military Modelling, Figurines, and Historical Miniatures, along with a few other stray periodicals and some out-of-print books. Be sure to visit the articles page to finds this treasure-trove of new (old) material!
Finally, we’ve responded to a couple of new questions on our comments page, and we always welcome more, in addition to including your work, or happily accepting other older articles or images about box dioramas that we have not yet found and scanned to include on this site. We aim to make this the ultimate resource for box diorama builders and enthusiasts, and we need your help to make that happen!
Until next time, happy modeling, and enjoy the site!—Jim, Barry, and Darryl, your faithful editors of BOXDIORAMAS.COM

August, 2014

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August, 2014: Finally catching up on box diorama news from the MFCA show in Valley Forge last May and the World Expo in Stresa last July, we have added several pictures of new boxes seen at both events to the Various artists, Newer Work section of the Artists Galleries page. While boxes were not as plentiful at either event as at they were at the last MMSI show, it was still great to see them represented. Here are a few additional photos of the boxes at Stresa, including several featuring small-scale fantasy figures on display at the Scorpio Models booth (we hopefully will feature more on these soon). 

I was proud to have my “Il Cenacolo” share space beside John Schley’s two boxes, which are featured on his gallery page—he won a silver medal for “Nein,” his sniper scene, and the special Andrea Miniatures prize for “A Fallen Empire,” featuring Napoleon in his carriage after Waterloo.

One of the most satisfying feelings for an artist is to watch people enjoying his or her work. Here is an Italian family that seemed fascinated by “Il Cenacolo,” as well as a group of nuns who I caught a little too late, two seconds after they all had been oohing and ahhing over the scene for several minutes.

Finally, here are shots of Barry Biediger by his gold-medal-winning box and the two of us, your faithful Web site admins, hamming it up in sunny Italy. Darryl (admin number three!), we wish you could have been there!