Lobster Telephone

The Surrealist Object builds on the idea of the found object, or readymade, as art, which was introduced by Dada. Possibly the most famous example of the Surrealist Object, the Lobster Telephone was created by Salvador Dali in 1938. Its strange pairing echoes poet Comte de Lautréamont's simile "as beautiful as the chance encounter of an umbrella and a sewing machine on a dissecting table", which became almost a mantra for Surrealism under the stewardship of André Breton.

Several versions of the object were made and it also appeared in certain paintings by Dali in the late 1930s, such as Mountain Lake. It was Dali's belief (and the belief of Surrealism in general), that the juxtaposition of objects not normally associated one another could result in something both playful and unsettling, while at the same time revealing unconscious desires. There's also an undeniable similarity in the shape of the telephone handset and the lobster carapace, which no doubt amused Dali to play on.

Of the combination, Dali himself said: "I do not understand why, when I ask for a grilled lobster in a restaurant, I am never served a cooked telephone; I do not understand why champagne is always chilled and why on the other hand telephones, which are habitually so frightfully warm and disagreeably sticky to the touch, are not also put in silver buckets with crushed ice around them."

As a lifelong artist - a painter - I've been wanting to make an art-related model for some time and though challenging, with all of its curved surfaces, the Lobster Telephone seemed like it would be a good fit for a LEGO display piece, if I could pull it off. Also a keen student of art history, Surrealism has always captured my imagination like no other movement. Dali, with his photorealistic technique, is among my favourite Surrealist artists, so it was nice to be able to pay tribute to his work with this project.

I've tried to stick quite closely to the version housed in Tate Modern, London, which features a telephone made by The Bell Company at Antwerp in Belgium, and I even included the manufacturer's label, which would be a sticker or printed piece in the set. There were a lot of challenges involved in getting it to look right, with so many curved surfaces and angles in both the telephone and the lobster atop, but hopefully you think I've done it justice!

Part count: 814

Approx dimensions: W 26cm L 13cm H 16cm