
Article by Alan Ayre
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Do you want to escape the rat race? Carlisle teacher Rob Ives has cleverly
invented several surreal options to do just that -boarding a flying fish and
travelling to the moon, 'surfing the web' with a spider and heading off into
oblivion or even Mexican waving with deranged chickens.
At first glance, Rob, who is 35 and married with a four-year-old daughter, looks
like your archetypal primary school teacher; bespectacled, sensible, nothing out of
the ordinary, really. But press the right buttons and he enthuses madly about hopping
sheep and pigs on the wing. There is more than a touch of Victorian nonsense writer Edward
Lear and 70's comic madmen Monty Python about Rob Ives' sense of humour and his brilliant,
wacky cardboard kits. "I'd describe my humour as quirky," he says. "It's a bit surreal
and I've got loads of ideas for future models. My latest is called 'Leisurely Lunch' and it
features a tortoise coming out of its shell and munching at a lettuce leaf."
Worth waiting for.
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A Yorkshire childhood spent taking clocks, watches and cameras apart and looking at
all the pieces set Rob on the road to hispresent obsession. "When I got older I learned
to put them back together again!" helaughs. He is largely self-taught. Ideas for new
models come into his head at any time of the day, on his bike, in the garden,
washing the dishes. "I love the creative side of all this.
Having designed a model the danger is not having the discipline to put in the
effort to make the actual kit."
Rob works at Carlisle's Robert Ferguson Junior Primary School and has just gone
part-time to concentrate on marketing his models.
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He trained as a maths and science
teacher at Ambleside's Charlotte Mason
College in the mid-80s after abandoning a
design course at Teesside Polytechnic.
"They'd ask you to make a toaster, it didn't
matter how it worked, as long as it was a box
with two holes in the top," he says critically.
Now, he commutes to work, from his home
at Broughton near Cockermouth.
Rob's first book of cut-out-and-put-
together kits was published in 1995. It fea-
tured different types of locks, appeared in
the London National Science Museum,
Hamley's toy shop, Cabaret Mechanical
Theatre and sold about 5,000 copies nation-
wide. His latest book, entitled 'Hopping
Sheep,' is due out any day and features four
of his crazy creature creations - a flying
fish,
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a pecking hen, hopping sheep and a
paper fool. You bring them to life by cutting
out their component parts, sticking them
together and winding a handle that turns
gears. Childishly simple but wonderfully
entertaining.
As any author or writer knows, getting
book publishers to produce your work rarely
makes you rich, and Rob is no exception. He
receives only a fraction of profits from his
books that retail at around the £5 mark. He
plans to branch out on his own and has his
own web site on the Internet - hence his spi-
der 'surfing the web.' Orders have already
come in over the wires from Paris and
America. So what is Rob's big dream? To
find a manufacturer who will mass produce
his designs, make him rich and allow him to
retire? His face lights up at the notion. "I
want to escape the rat race, to
make a living from my mod-
els," he says.
My favourite design, a hand
with tapping fingers called 'The
Impatient Outpatient' sums up
designer Rob Ives' life at the moment; bid-
ing his time, waiting for the big break that
could make his toys as familiar to the kids of
90s as Ker Plunk and Mousetrap were to the
kids of the 70s. I reckon he won't have that
long to wait...
Back to the Mantlepiece.
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last modified 9th March 1998
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