My father, Peter Hand, who has died aged 95, was an artist and trainer whose work ranged from large-scale public artworks – which he referred to as “play sculptures” – to an extended, private sequence of meticulously detailed dioramas.
For 20 years from the mid-Nineteen Sixties, when he was a lecturer at Bournemouth Faculty of Artwork, Peter was commissioned to supply numerous sculptural works for purchasing centres and different public areas. Large animals made in wooden, metal or fibreglass, these had been lovely artistic endeavors for youngsters – made to be touched, climbed on, dived into and slid by means of.
Beginning with three massive animals on the Arndale Centre (now the Dolphin Centre) in Poole, Peter was quickly commissioned by different native authorities, and so monumental geese appeared in Aylesbury, crustaceans had been put in in Southend, toads in Wooden Inexperienced, caterpillars in Brent Cross, and at the very least six gargantuan creatures arrived in Nottingham to entertain generations of passersby.
Graduating as a specialist in sculpture from Goldsmiths Faculty college of artwork in London, Peter had spent the Nineteen Fifties as an expert artist in numerous positions, together with as a stonemason within the restoration of Southwell Minster in Nottinghamshire, and as chief modeller at MGM Studios in Borehamwood.
There he labored on props and decor in such movies as The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), starring Ingrid Bergman, A Contact of Larceny (1959), with James Mason, and the British “creature characteristic” Gorgo (1961), for which Peter created the monster – together with its “twitching ears,” which have made the movie a cult favorite with B-movie followers ever since.
In 1960, Peter joined Bournemouth Faculty of Artwork, the place he lectured till the mid-Nineteen Eighties when he emigrated to Italy for almost a decade. His work as a trainer by no means diminished his skilled output.
In stark distinction to the play sculptures, for a lot of a long time till close to the tip of his life Peter undertook a extra private undertaking of dioramas impressed by Jungian psychology. These mystical works drew on Etruscan artwork as a lot because the pre-Raphaelites, and the arcane imagery of hermaphrodites and mandalas in addition to Victorian poetry and classical music. Made in fibreglass to an astonishingly excessive degree of element, some had been exhibited in Parma, Zurich and, on a couple of event, on the Royal Academy summer time exhibition.
Peter wrote about his life in three volumes of memoirs. He was born in Cambridge, the son of Daisy (nee Rose) and Frank Hand. When his dad and mom divorced within the mid-Thirties, he remained within the custody of his father, who grew to become the cemeteries superintendent (and a wartime air warden) for Redhill and Reigate, in Surrey.
Peter went to Reigate grammar college after which did nationwide service within the late Forties; whereas on depart he met Margaret Abbott on a seaside journey to Clacton-on-Sea. They had been married for almost 20 years, and had 4 sons. Though the wedding led to divorce they at all times remained amicable.
Peter is survived by his sons, David, Mark, Stephen and me, and by 9 grandchildren.
