Plastic Sketches
Plastic Sketches were the forerunner of Osborne Ivorex plaques. First appearing in 1898, the two methods of displaying a scene overlapped for a few years at the start of the 1900’s but the Plastic Sketches inevitably gave way to the better medium of the wall hanging plaque. The Plastic Sketch years were the time when Osborne was setting up his business and establishing a market for his work, and while the Plastic Sketches got him up and running it was the hanging plaques that would prove to provide his bread and butter.
The term ‘Plastic Sketch’ comes from modeling in clay when the clay is in a plastic malleable state and can easily be sculpted or moulded. The term was applied to the J. and J.G. Low tile plaques that Osborne designed in the 1800’s, and Osborne carried this name through to his free standing plaster shelf pieces when he began making them in England around 1898.
Osborne’s early sketches were fairly basic and even rather crude compared to his previous sculpting for the Low Tile Co. but it developed nicely in what must be the best piece, in the form of “The Baptism of King Ethelbert’ which is very nicely modelled and deeply sculpted with good detail.
