About GLOBE FIGURES

by Karl H. Krebs

GLOBE FIGURES is a one-man company. I founded GLOBE in 1984 in order to produce and market the figures I had begun sculpting as a side-line, in parallel to my main work as a physicist.
GLOBE now occupies me full-time, and when needed our son also joins in, doing computer-related work such as the designing and production of the GLOBE FIGURES catalogue.
I spend a good part of my time on the work I really want to do myself, in particular the preparatory research, sculpting and painting. But at least as much has to go into other activities which are equally necessary, such as mould-making, casting master figures, photography, production casting, packing and despatching orders, attendance at figure shows and administration.
All GLOBE 's figures are my own, and I have never sculpted for other firms.

I discovered miniature figures in 1978. Painting figures soon led on to sculpting, and this is where I really got hooked. Nobody seemed to find my sudden infatuation surprising, I have made little models since childhood, have drawn faces since as far back as I can remember and have long been fascinated by costumes and the folds of drapery.
My other interest has always been the theatre. This is also a strong link to figure-sculpting, as miniature scenes are basically "frozen drama", and our little figures behave on their stage as actors do on theirs. For the "animation" of my figures, I now draw constantly on the professional training I once had as an actor, at Jacques Lecoq's school of movement and theatre.

The theatre connection also explains my choice of name for the company, referring as it does to Shakespeare's "Globe Theatre" and reminding us that "all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players". "GLOBE" also appealed to me because of my rather mixed background, pointing as it does beyond the frontiers of a single country. I am of Anglo-German descent, was brought up in both countries and have also grown strong roots in France, where I lived for a number of years (PhD at the Nuclear Research Centre in Grenoble, school of drama in Paris and founding member of the "Théâtre Partisan").

Setting up and maintaining GLOBE FIGURES instead of sculpting on commission has allowed me to develop ideas of my own and to release figures and figure series which would not have appeared otherwise. This explains some distinguishing features:

• To my knowledge, GLOBE is now the only company in Europe which fully concentrates on civilian figures. This I want to continue: making figures within a concept of history which extends well beyond the military, considering civilization as a whole and encompassing both the social and the cultural fields. My focus is rather everyday life in the past, looking at diverse scenes of life as it actually was centuries ago (or as we believe it was, on the basis of all available evidence).

• In line with the civilian emphasis, more than half my costumed figures are women.

• GLOBE is the first - and as yet the only - company to have started a series of medieval furniture andfurnishings, giving the figures a civilian setting to live in.

• The nudes I have sculpted are not of the "girlie" figure category which has expanded so strongly in the last 10 years.

My main interest in GLOBE is making figures, my prime concern the quality of sculpture. For me, this first means getting attitude and movement exactly right from the beginning: if the basic movement isn't true, no amount of detailing will lead to an expressive figure. In the following, much more time-consuming stages of work, what I like most is modelling faces (real, individual faces), sculpting clothes and positioning and detailing it's folds.
Movement, folds and faces are, I believe, the most important ingredients of quality in a figure, contributing foremost to its expressiveness. They have also become Globe's hallmark.

I want you, the buyer, to receive from GLOBE a figure which will be of excellent taste, a delight to paint, and of a quality second to none in the field of miniatures.