La Pinta

Product description

There are many injection-moulded plastic kits and wooden models available on the market, but they do not always capture the imagination. The Pinta was created largely by hand in polystyrene, allowing the atmosphere of a model crafted by a miniature shipwright to be recreated.

The master model was used to create silicone moulds, from which exact copies are produced in limited numbers using two-component resin. Careful painting gives the models the appearance of tar, untreated wood and painted surfaces in various stages of weathering and deterioration.

The Pinta, Niña and Santa Maria make a beautiful ensemble, while Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas provides an appealing theme for a diorama. The Pinta is the first model to be released, with the Niña and Santa Maria to follow at a later date.

The principal sources used in developing the model were Xavier Pastor’s Anatomy of the Ship: The Ships of Christopher Columbus and Conway’s History of the Ship: Cogs, Caravels and Galleons.

The sources are not simply followed without question. Particular attention is paid to how the ship would actually have functioned: how it would have been prepared for the voyage, how a crew of 26 would have lived on board, and how the traditions and practices of 15th-century shipbuilding and seafaring could be incorporated into the model.

The result is more than a historically inspired miniature. It is an attempt to capture the character of a working 15th-century vessel and the atmosphere of life aboard it.