Smaller art galleries don’t tend to have many, or indeed any, plinths for displaying 3D work. This is understandable because most artwork is 2D and hangs on the wall and a large collection of plinths would be expensive and present storage issues when not in use. So I was trying to think of an alternative to purpose-made plinths and I came up with the idea of tea chests, remember those? Back in the day wooden tea chests were commonly used for moving house or for a homemade double bass in a skiffle band, but these days you don’t see them so much. Maybe tea isn’t shipped in single-use plywood boxes anymore. Not to be discouraged I posted a wanted request for old tea chests in the local Facebook marketplace and got quite a good response – mostly from people who had used them to move house thirty or more years ago and still had them cluttering up their attics and garages. I wasn’t sure how they’d look with my robots but it turned out that the contrasting colour and texture, and maybe the fact that they are also recycled, compliments them quite well.
