27 February 2008

Carve their name with pride.... in lard

All of Scotland will be proud to hear of a group of catering students from Adam Smith College in Kirkcaldy swept the boards in a contest to carve statues out of fat. 11 students took away prizes in the competition at Hotelympia, a trade fair for the hospitality industry, in London. The gold trophy winner carved an 18in model of Mickey Mouse. While the silver medallist created a statue of two horses with a rider on one of the animals. Another creation was a sculpture of Ozzy Osborne (above).

Winning student Leanne Sword said: "I wasn't expecting it. I was expecting to get something but I never thought for a minute that I'd get the gold." Her fat Mickey Mouse took three months to create. "I'd say the belt was the most difficult [part] and possibly the ears, just to get them right and the same size."


Catering lecturer Tom Pratt travelled to the event with his students and has been overjoyed by their success. "These fat sculptures would be placed on a buffet table in high class hotels. They would be put onto shop windows to grab people's attention, in butchers shop's windows, places like that. It shows the skill of the chefs who create these things."


To be honest it’s not a medium I would ever have thought of. Then again if Chris Ofili can use elephant dung then fair play to them!

9 comments:

Sean Jeating said...

Well, it attracts my eyes at least more than Beuys' 'fat corner'. :)

jmb said...

So how does this make them a better chef? Sounds like an incredible waste of time to me, when they could be learning something useful, like how to prepare food. It shows the skill of the chefs, well artistic but can they cook? I don't get it.

Richard Havers said...

It shows how different Scotland is to England. In practically every butcher's shp there's one of those sculptures and there are adverts in the papers every week. Wanted Lard Sculptor, must have their own knives. Lard supplied.

The Lone Beader® said...

Hahaha. That is funny!!

jams o donnell said...

Bloody hell, yes Sean. I agree!

I had not heard of lard as a medium for sculpture before jmb. It amused me. I daresay it's not detractign from their studies though.

Are you serious Richard!

It amused me too LB.

Jan Parrish said...

Unbelievable.

So what about ants... I'm thinking that could be a problem, or a warm day. :)

jams o donnell said...

not to mention flies!

Anonymous said...

I'm one of the fat carver,s i did the Ozzy and yes i can cook that's why i went to college i did it in my spare time and i am going to do two more for next years competitionan and just to let you know i am 40 years old and that was my frist time doing one and i loved it

jams o donnell said...

Joking aside anonymous, fair play to you. Congratulation on winning the prize and good luck for next year.