The Compleat Sculptor, Inc., is an American

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...

er of

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

supplies. Established in New York City in 1995 as a comprehensive source of sculptural materials and tools, it is one of the largest sculptural materials suppliers in the world. It also provides classes and related services for professional

sculptors Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...

, as well as other users of sculptural materials, such as movie and television

set designer Scenic design (also known as scenography, stage design, or set design) is the creation of theatrical, as well as film or television scenery. Scenic designers come from a variety of artistic backgrounds, but in recent years, are mostly trained ...

s and law enforcement forensic teams.

Background

Marc and Ailene Fields started The Compleat Sculptor as a family business in 1995. The company was founded to supply basic media for sculptors such as clays, various stone materials, and many types of wood, as well as tools needed to work on sculpting materials. The company also began offering product demonstrations and classes:

stone carving Stone carving is an activity where pieces of rough natural stone are shaped by the controlled removal of stone. Owing to the permanence of the material, stone work has survived which was created during our prehistory or past time. Work carried ...

wood carving Wood carving is a form of woodworking by means of a cutting tool (knife) in one hand or a chisel by two hands or with one hand on a chisel and one hand on a mallet, resulting in a wooden figure or figurine, or in the sculptural ornamentation ...

, clay work, wax work, foam sculpting, and multimedia workshops. Robin Finn of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' characterized the store as, "...peeling walls, scaly ceilings and scarred linoleum floors. The place is not pretty. But that is not the point. Sculptors and other artisans gather here the way handymen haunt the cobweb-covered aisles of old hardware stores." Since its founding, The Compleat Sculptor has steadily increased its store and catalog product lines, as well as its customer base, making it one of the largest suppliers of its kind in the world.

Products and services

The company's basic stone sculptural materials inventory includes 300 tons of

marble Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or Dolomite (mineral), dolomite. Marble is typically not Foliation (geology), foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the ...

alabaster Alabaster is a mineral or rock that is soft, often used for carving, and is processed for plaster powder. Archaeologists and the stone processing industry use the word differently from geologists. The former use it in a wider sense that includes ...

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

and

soapstone Soapstone (also known as steatite or soaprock) is a talc-schist, which is a type of metamorphic rock. It is composed largely of the magnesium rich mineral talc. It is produced by dynamothermal metamorphism and metasomatism, which occur in the zo ...

. The store also supplies other sculpting media (clay,

cast metal In metalworking and jewelry making, casting is a process in which a liquid metal is delivered into a mold (usually by a crucible) that contains a negative impression (i.e., a three-dimensional negative image) of the intended shape. The metal is ...

ceramic A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...

, wood,

polymers A polymer (; Greek '' poly-'', "many" + ''-mer'', "part") is a substance or material consisting of very large molecules called macromolecules, composed of many repeating subunits. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, both synthetic an ...

composite materials A composite material (also called a composition material or shortened to composite, which is the common name) is a material which is produced from two or more constituent materials. These constituent materials have notably dissimilar chemical or ...

and glass) and sculpting tools (

chisels A chisel is a tool with a characteristically shaped cutting edge (such that wood chisels have lent part of their name to a particular grind) of blade on its end, for carving or cutting a hard material such as wood, stone, or metal by hand, stru ...

sander A sander is a power tool used to smooth surfaces by abrasion with sandpaper. Sanders have a means to attach the sandpaper and a mechanism to move it rapidly contained within a housing with means to hand-hold it or fix it to a workbench. Woodwo ...

grinders Grinder may refer to: Machinery *Various types of grinding machine, used in a machining operation to refine the surface of materials *Food grinders **Blade grinder, includes food processors, blenders, electric coffee and spice grinders, etc. **Co ...

, polishes). The company maintains a 15,000-item inventory to provide supplies for a diverse clientele. The customer base includes professional sculptors, prop artists for stage and television programs, museum

conservators In certain areas of England, Conservators are statutory bodies which manage areas of countryside for the use of the public. Establishment, Role and Powers Conservators are bodies corporate generally established, and granted their powers, by a ...

archaeologists Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

, law enforcement needing media for crime-scene restorations and

ballistics Ballistics is the field of mechanics concerned with the launching, flight behaviour and impact effects of projectiles, especially ranged weapon munitions such as bullets, unguided bombs, rockets or the like; the science or art of designing and a ...

molds, and first responders creating fake wounds for

triage In medicine, triage () is a practice invoked when acute care cannot be provided for lack of resources. The process rations care towards those who are most in need of immediate care, and who benefit most from it. More generally it refers to prio ...

training, as well as

arts and crafts A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...

clients. Company services include finishing and polishing stone sculptures,

kiln A kiln is a thermally insulated chamber, a type of oven, that produces temperatures sufficient to complete some process, such as hardening, drying, or chemical changes. Kilns have been used for millennia to turn objects made from clay int ...

firing clay sculptures,

foundry A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...

services for bronze castings, resin formulations, and mounting and shipping services for finished works. The company custom-designs some

rasp A rasp is a coarse form of file used for coarsely shaping wood or other material. Typically a hand tool, it consists of a generally tapered rectangular, round, or half-round sectioned bar of case hardened steel with distinct, individually cut ...

s and

resins In polymer chemistry and materials science, resin is a solid or highly viscous substance of plant or synthetic origin that is typically convertible into polymers. Resins are usually mixtures of organic compounds. This article focuses on natu ...

, and has also ventured into product

prototyping A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and software programming. A prototype is generally used to ...

for architectural businesses, including reproduction of bricks, architectural details, and decorative elements in new construction or

building restoration Conservation and restoration of immovable cultural property describes the process through which the material, historical, and design integrity of any Cultural property, immovable cultural property are prolonged through carefully planned interve ...

References

External links

The Compleat Sculptor
{{DEFAULTSORT:Compleat Sculptor Privately held companies based in New York (state) American companies established in 1995 Retail companies established in 1995 Companies based in New York City Companies based in Manhattan