The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Fife woman’s plea for return of ‘sentimental’ bronze feet
Memento from art school days stolen from front garden of home
A Fife woman is appealing to bring the thieves who made off with a pair of bronze feet from her doorstep to heel.
The casts – which were made by Judith Winter while she was in her second year studying sculpture at London’s Saint Martin’s School of Art in 1986 – have been stolen from outside her Newport home.
And the curator, writer and lecturer has been left baffled by the theft – as the sculpture is not worth a penny, but holds a strong sentimental value as a reminder of her student days.
The casts are of her own size five-anda-half feet and were moulded at a foundry with the help of her close friend Chris Gallaccio.
The mother-of-two has kept them for more than three decades, giving the feet a new lease on life as garden ornaments at her Newport home. Mrs Winter is calling on locals to keep their eyes peeled for the feet, as she believes they may have been abandoned in the area or they could appear in a local thrift shop.
Though unable to pinpoint the precise date they were stolen, the feet are believed to have gone missing recently.
She said: “It is kind of sad, I can’t see what value they would be to anyone else really.
“I only noticed when I was gardening. I hadn’t been in the garden for a while. I had them at the front door, they were hidden by plants and things. It felt like a nice place to put them. I only noticed it last week.
“Thirty-one years ago I was an art student at Saint Martin’s School of Art studying sculpture, they have sort of stayed with me and are a memento of that time and those formative experiences.
“They are my feet. At that time I was 21. They were cast also by a close friend – who was an artist and who is sadly not here any more – and a technician at quite a well-known foundry in London..”
Though admitting she perhaps shouldn’t have left them outside, Mrs Winter said: “If anyone took them as a joke or just because they thought they were amusing, if they can return them that would be wonderful.If it was taken as a joke, I imagine they may just be abandoned somewhere.”