A pair of childhood friends made an egg-tastic life-sized Battle of Britain spitfire from egg boxes to help raise awareness for a war veteran charity.
A pair of childhood friends made a life-sized Battle of Britain spitfire from egg boxes to help raise awareness for a war veterans charity.
Charlotte Austen, 27 and Jack Munro, 26, of Lansdowne Road, London Fields spent six weeks and a couple of sleepless nights designing, building and painting the spitfire.
The aircraft model was made from 6,500 Eggs for Soldiers egg boxes, five litres of glue, 5,000 nails, 10 litres of paint and 10,000 staples.
Miss Austen, a former Central Saint Martins graduate and prop-maker, said: “We took the design and measurements from a scale model of the Mark-I spitfire.
“My friend Jack is an amazing architectural designer. He drew up the drawings/computerised images and we went from there.
A carpenter helped them create the inside, while the frame was made from MDF and plywood with fabric stretched over the skeleton and the egg boxes painstakingly glued on individually.
This is the first time Miss Austen, who trained as a sculptor has made something like this. She said: “I basically make anything that I’m asked to make ranging from costumes and flowers to life-sized body casts and big wooden structures, but this is the first time I’ve made a spitfire.”
Architectural designer Jack Munro, of Micromega, said: “It has been hugely enjoyable to work on such a unique project for a fantastic charity. “The biggest challenge in building the structure of the Eggs for Soldiers Spitfire was to recreate the plane’s iconic but complex geometry as accurately as possible.
“Every surface of the Spitfire is double curved, and to replicate this we have used a combination of traditional timber construction techniques and advanced digital processes such as laser cutting. This has enabled us to create a light, efficient and precise structure.”
The pair, who met at boarding school, have always wanted to work together.
Miss Austen added: “We always wanted to work together and this was the ideal project to do so as it complemented our skills. It went really smoothly. We all worked really well together. It was great fun.”
Help for Heroes Heroes is a charity that helps those who have been wounded in current conflicts. Noble Foods, which owns Eggs for Soldiers, are a charity partner.
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