Christmas kingdom
Some of Mandy’s bold and fantastical designs
First published in edition 196 of The Northumbrian, Oct/Nov 2023
Getting ready for Christmas? Finished your selkies and mermaids? Rosie McGlade visits Berwick-based sculptor and prop-maker extraordinaire Mandy Bryson as she works around the clock to add the final touches to works of mythological art for 2024’s Christmas Kingdom at Bamburgh Castle
At the back of Mandy Bryson’s pretty cottage in Berwick is a very small shed, and in that shed is a selkie surrounded by pots of glass eyes and arty paraphernalia with cut-out pictures pinned to the wall, all very neatly laid out, as they must be in such a tiny space.
On the opposite wall are human head-sized versions of a badger, an owl, a stag, and a swan, and beside them a magnificent peacock. Each are painstakingly finished in cotton strips Mandy has carefully frayed to create hair-like texture, then glued on and painted. It’s hard to know what to focus on first. We turn back to the selkie, as yet unpainted, its seal face polished, its eyes looking deep into ours and crying out to be touched. What’s a selkie? I look it up on Wikipedia to check I’ve got it right: “A mythological creature that can shapeshift between seal and human form by removing or putting on its seal skin.”
There’s another on Mandy’s dining room table up in the house, life-size again but now more obviously selkie-like, its seal head folded over the face of a beautiful young mermaid, her body descending into the depths of the table and reappearing with a powerful seal tail behind her.
They are destined for a shell-encrusted lagoon inside Bamburgh Castle; part of a Christmas Kingdom extravaganza inspired by the myths and legends of Northumberland and billed as the biggest indoor Christmas event in the North East.
Anyone who has attended a Charlotte Lloyd Webber event will have some idea of what to anticipate. If you haven’t seen one, just expect to be charmed and enthralled. Even if you’re an out-and-out humbug, this is like someone has brought to life your wildest childhood fantasies about the magic of Christmas. Big, shiny and glittering, utterly over the top, yet tasteful, beautiful and constantly surprising.
Lloyd Webber and her team have their base at Castle Howard, near York, where they have been wowing visitors for several years with breathtaking Christmas staging throughout the magnificent halls. This will be their third year at Bamburgh Castle – their biggest here yet.
Back in Mandy’s cottage towards the end of September, it’s clear she has a lot on her plate, with the event kicking off on November 11. Mandy – blonde, petite, and almost fairy-like herself – looks suitably daunted. Along with the Bamburgh selkies, she has a fairy queen to make, plus a giant Elizabeth I sculpture for Belvoir Castle. It’s currently under a tarpaulin outside her shed. Plus eight animal heads, or medieval animal mask ‘mummers’, to which she must add an ass, a boar and a donkey.
“I also need to make a mermaid for Castle Howard, which I haven’t started yet.”
Growing up in Wooler, the youngest daughter of the Bryson’s bakery family which closed in 1995 after decades of business, Mandy studied art at Edinburgh College and won several scholarships that have allowed her to study painting, jewellery, stained glass, mosaics, photography and ceramics, but with an overall specialism in sculpture.
“It was old school. We had a life model and we had our callipers and we would measure the forms exactly. There weren’t many traditional skills like that being taught at the time.”
She fell in love with stone carving, and then a year after leaving college became pregnant with the first of three sons, the eldest now in his early thirties. She managed to persuade the Maltings Art Centre in Berwick to give her the ground floor, and did her stone carving at Berwick Barracks. “It was cold!”
Supplementing her income with a variety of jobs, Mandy worked as a florist for five years at the Flower Room in the town. “I didn’t have any training, but they just wanted someone with an eye for colour.” She had another job at the English Heritage visitor centre on the Ford and Etal estate, where she and her family lived for 20 years before moving to their Berwick cottage about six years ago.
All in all, it was the perfect background for what was to come. “I had a friend who worked at Blenheim Palace and they needed a florist,” Mandy explains. “They wanted someone with background in floristry to help with the festive swagging and wreaths, and they were paying prop-makers to make props. I had never worked with the materials they were using – all the styrofoam and foam coat and glue – but I thought I could give it a go.”
She researched taxidermy skills and began using epoxy clay to bring something of a fine art finish to what she humbly calls props, but which to most eyes are stunning and enchanting art forms.
“I start with a polystyrene head and the first process is trying to get the eyes in straight, which is actually really difficult. There was one Cinderella I made who had a bit of a squint! I use tin foil for the hair, which is weatherproof, and if you bash it is really strong. Then I add epoxy clay to the whole thing and sand and polish it down, then paint it.”
Charlotte Lloyd Webber Event Design now furnishes five attractions at stately homes and castles for Christmas. Along with Castle Howard and Bamburgh Castle there is Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire, Polesden Lacey in Surrey, and Hatfield House in Hertfordshire.
Mandy introduced herself to Charlotte when visiting Castle Howard and the two struck an immediate bond. Last year, Mandy’s first at Castle Howard, had her making life-sized versions of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Prince Charming and the Ice Queen, along with two more Cinderellas, a Prince Charming and a Fairy Godmother for Belvoir.
Some husbands wouldn’t appreciate a life-sized selkie on their dining room table, but Jason Bullock is not one of those men. His engineering background also comes in more than handy during Mandy’s Christmas build-up. “We’ve had to put metalwork into the bottom of the heads so they can be attached to the various frameworks. He’s long-suffering but very practical and helpful. The work involves a lot of problem-solving.”
What he gets in return is a home that is itself like something from a storybook. Mandy’s taxidermy-like sculptures feature everywhere, a terrier here with a ruff around its neck; a white rabbit in the living room window holding a red balloon; and opposite a white stag’s head mounted to the wall with ghostly pink eyes and a white owl on its antlers. Upstairs on the landing is another stag with branches for antlers full of birds. It is all absolutely charming and very beautiful. Is it hard to part with the things she makes?
“Yes.” Mandy says without hesitation. “My dream is to make more serious sculptures cast in bronze that will last for generations. It’s just narrowing down the imagination as I’m quite quirky in my choices, but I’m not sure other people are as quirky. I’m thinking mostly animal-based pieces with a human element to them, either an item of clothing or something that has a folklore element, a narrative. It has to be a little humorous. Something perhaps a little childlike, but with a serious message.
“But my long, long-term goal is to keep making these furry forms and just have a tiny go through the velvet curtains and a little shop, maybe a visitor attraction, probably in Berwick or near here. It’s a bit like stepping back in time. I’m in my own little bubble trying to slow down a modern world. It makes me wonder if I had a a deprived childhood, they way I’m working with toys. But I was the youngest child and the baby of the family.”
She loves her work, daunting as it currently is. “It all needs finishing by early November, and then in December I can put my feet up.”
Does she go over the top with Christmas at home? “No!” she laughs. “Not really.”
ALL WE WANT FOR CHRISTMAS
Bamburgh castle co-owner Claire Watson Armstrong met Charlotte Lloyd Webber and her team at an awards ceremony in London. “We’d been so blown away by what they had done at Castle Howard that we asked if she would be interested in doing something at Bamburgh, and we’re now into our third year!” says Claire.
“She and her team have spent a long time researching the myths and legends that are unique to Northumbria. Things like the shape-shifting selkies, the Northumbrian fairy folk, fairy rings, and Queen Bebba from whom Bamburgh gets its name, and she’s putting her incredible artistic spin on it all. It’s going to be Bamburgh through and through with this incredible, magical, Chistmassy twist to it all.”
While the Kings Hall will celebrate Yuletide in more traditional style, Queen Bebba will dominate another stately space in a massive dress made of conifers and Christmas greenery. Another room will devote itself to the legend of the The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh, in which a princess is turned into a dragon by her jealous step-mother. Elsewhere, Mandy Bryson’s selkies will enchant in their fountain lagoon.
“Charlotte knows the castle well now and each room will have a different theme backed up by towering displays of Christmas foliage and decorations,” explains Claire. “It will all be very opulent, lavish and theatrical. It really will take your breath away and it will appeal to all ages. Plus, we’re so delighted that Mandy Bryson is working with us this year. Her work is absolutely gorgeous and it’s so special that she’s local.”
Claire is also excited about the additional effects the Charlotte Lloyd Webber team
are devising. “There will be enchanted forests with all sorts of fairy folk flitting around and toadstools everywhere, and the peeling sounds of fairy laughter in these incredible soundscapes.”
The Christmas Kingdom is at Bamburgh Castle, Saturday November 11-January 7, 2024. Entry to the kingdom is free with a general admission ticket. You can also book in advance to meet Father Christmas or enjoy festive wreath making. For details, visit: www.bamburghcastle.com/events/christmas-kingdom