‘Have you ever looked really closely at a fish? Seen how the scales lock together to form a pattern? The transition between the finsand body, head and back? The nostrils and separate plates that make up the head? The colours and iridescence in the scales, thespots and speckles in the fins? I thought I had until I started trying to make one’
What started off as a small challenge that I had set myself, quickly grew into an all-encompassing obsession. I wanted to recreate a perch and decided to make it the biggest I’d ever caught one bright cool day with a perfect blue sky near the end of the 2012 fishing season. Six years had passed since I had that fish reposing in my landing net on the banks of the river Mole above Dorking but the memory of it was still very strong.
A lot had happened in those six years: I had gone from working as a 3D visualiser in the exhibition industry to a horticulturist working in the glasshouses at Kew.
When I was a boy I always wanted to be a stop-motion animator,inspired by the work of Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit. I went on to do a degree at Farnham Art College and even moved to Bristol, near Aardman Studios, after I graduated in 2006. The industry had moved on and I felt like a split-cane rod builder apprentice trying to get a job in the Shimano factory.
So, rather than trying to forge a career in hands-on animation, I learnt to create realistic 3D visuals on the computer and eventually landed a job in a cutthroat advertising studio in the West End of London. I am not ashamed to admit that I was out of my depth, like a roach that had swum into a pike’s lair. I needed to get back to my shoal and found it while pursuing a career in horticulture, which had always been a great interest of mine.
Working at Kew was great. It was like being part of a big family and I was happy for a while. I met my partner there: she was my boss (and still is). However, after all the studying and excitement of my new career waned, I was all too aware my creative side was being neglected; the perch replica was the perfect project to fill this void.
Every day I’d be at work planning and thinking about each stage of that fish, waiting for the clock to reach four so I could get back home and crack on. I lived on Kew Green and it took me seven minutes door-to-door, three if I ran.
I wanted to get everything exactly right on that perch but the problem I faced was to create the fish from a side-on photo with all the fins folded up. These days I have created a fair few fish and have the experience and skills to create a fish very accurately from even the worst of photos. Back then it was like learning a new language with only half the text book. I plundered the internet for other images of perch from different angles but it was no good, I had to go fishing!
For a while, every fish I caught had a full scale inspection from head to tail. I realised then that I had never properly looked at a fish – they are so effortlessly perfect. I would study them close-up, photograph them from above, below and back to front, no fin overlooked. I would be quick and efficient between dunks, the fish’s welfare was always a priority. I built up my own encyclopaedia of different species to which I am still adding to today. It also gave my fishing a new dimension.
At every stage of that first fish I faced new creative problems to overcome; things would appear from nowhere. The fish sculptor’s handbook did not exist so I came up with my own techniques, leaning on the model making skills I had learnt at Farnham fifteen years earlier. I taught myself casting in resin from silicone moulds (a must for anyone who wants to create transparent fins). I designed and built my own pressure pot and vacuum chamber, using little more than an old Prestige pressure cooker and bicycle-pump.
The painting was probably the most enjoyable part of the process for that first fish. With the use of acrylic paint, I saw the perch come alive in front of me with every stroke of the brush. I kept using acrylic paint for the next couple of fish but now use oil, which gives a deeper, richer finish and should last a lifetime without peeling or fading.
I knew I wanted to present it in that classic ‘Cooper’ style but witha background true to its habitat, which was where my horticultural training came to good use. I found a chap ‘up north’ who bends glass in the old-fashioned way. Next was the gilded lettering and gilt edge; I started by looking at vinyl lettering. Certainly, it was quick and clean but definitely not authentic or traditional and it felt like a total cop-out, especially after the amount of effort put into making the fish. So I taught myself reverse glass gilding, a tricky process using water-size and 24ct gold leaf. The results were worth the extra effort though, and with it being on the inside of the glass, there were no problems with it ever getting damaged.
I learnt new techniques to achieve all I wanted. At times I almost gave up on some of the processes, thinking them to be impossible to achieve to a high level at home, but I persevered and within a year I had my first fish completed. It felt like a real triumph when I applied the last coat of varnish to the wooden box.
So I quit my job at Kew in the autumn of 2019 and went out on my own, gardening and landscaping. I was motivated by working less but getting paid more, with weekday fishing trips and later starts. I could work on my fish sculptures in the evenings too. But that first spring and summer I got so busy that I had less time than ever. I was secretly praying to be put under house arrest in that first spring of 2020, but it didn’t happen. The work I was doing though was much more creative and it filled the hole the fish sculptures had done while working at Kew, so I was content.
The winter came and with it the cold, wet and short days. This meant I could work on my second fish (a chub caught from the Colne). It was slightly easier than the first, mainly due to having had a full body scan and photographic session on the river bank. I had days of fish making and going fishing when I liked. Things finally began to make sense; work like a dog from mid March to mid October, wind down to Christmas, close up shop and get stuck into the fish and fishing until the end of the season, then repeat! And this is what I did for several years until, without warning, we had to leave our house on Kew Green.
We landed in a small village in Dorset with a pub two doors down. I look out onto a very rural scene from my workroom window,with ravens and buzzards often flying high in the sky above the Wessex Ridgeway visible to the east.
The move gave me time to work on my fish. I made a sculpture of a roach I caught on the Thames from the glorious stretch I had on my doorstep at Kew. Then last year I had my first commission – this changed everything. I made the fish from start to finish with no long breaks in between and I loved every minute of it. So my efforts have now shifted very much towards my fish sculptures.
I am planning on making some still-water fish sculptures this year, which means familiarising myself with a nearby pond or lake. I am a river angler almost exclusively but am looking forward to plopping a float into an under-fished pool somewhere, with lily pads and dark clean water. I hope to become acquainted with some of its residents too, like the prehistoric looking crucians, themighty carp or the green tench with their small red eyes and spoon-shaped fins.
But for now the end of the season is approaching fast and with the Dorset Stour and Frome only a Wallis cast away and Hampshire Avon not much further, I have no time to waste trying to catch and sculpt my next fish, let’s make it a grayling perhaps!
Writing & Images Edward Barrett – Spring 2025
To Contact Edward – eb.sculptedfishreplica@gmail.com
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