Take a Picture, It’ll Last Longer

July 7, 2014

Have you ever gone into an art museum and wished you could take one of the pieces home? While we may take a picture, artist Lee-Ann Chellis Wessel decided to take it one step further! With advanced art degrees, Chellis Wessel knew the technical aspects of creating pottery. But it wasn’t until she began creating period appropriate ceramics as gifts to furnish her mother’s miniature Colonial Revival house that she developed a passion for replicating the old masters in one-inch scale.

Chellis Wessel’s miniature artistry thrives from an interest in comparing and contrasting the style, period, form, function, and even geographic origin of the artworks, such as this charger that she reproduced from the collection at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. She enjoys musing about the work’s original home, “I’ve always been really interested in… the historical aspect of what kinds of pieces were appropriate for this type of house, style, and period.”

While The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures is closed for renovation, see this charger and more, along with some of their full-scale counterparts, on view now through February 22, 2015 at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.