Jon Grundon once made props for Doctor Who. Now his business, Broken Hare Workshops, is adapting to Covid.
Jon Grundon got his break working in the props department on Doctor Who. But it’s our earthly future he’s worried about.
His apprenticeship helped him establish his business moulding and flocking life-size animal sculptures on Tudor Lane in Cardiff.
But it didn’t prepare him for the hours which an independent business must now devote to promoting itself online. The pandemic was the turning point.
The 39-year old has just seen his work transformed by the new normal.
“We do a whole wedding hire service and it’s gone, completely gone. That’s a big change for us,” said Jon.
Like many in the props industry, working in TV and film had been a way of life for Jon, until the work dried up.
He first established his company, Broken Hare Workshops, in 2013 after five years freelancing for the BBC. He says there’s now lots he’s no longer doing.
“TV and film’s still going on but the one’s that are going on are all in house, so they’ve got their own prop guys and stuff like that,” he said.
“We used to do Casualty all he time, so we’d do rubber frying pans or rubber fish. Now, it’s spending that extra time trying to find new audiences, new markets.”
Jon stayed away from attracting commissions and promoting his work through social media for nearly a decade. But now, like millions of others, he’s on it every morning and posting stories late at night.
“It’s definitely pushed me in a different direction. It’s given me a kick up the arse which I needed because we were doing alright with just people coming to us,” he said.
“I also do big fibre glass moulds for a surgeon in Bridgend, who used to bring 3D printed body parts. I’d mould them and he’d take them back to the lab and cast fake body parts. That work has slowed down.”
The market for animal sculptures moves quickly. For a while Jon’s big seller was unicorn heads. Not any more. And predicting the next trend is difficult.
He added: “We went to an art market in Frome. We took the fox, zebra and the stag. And basically all the kids were like, ‘Do you do unicorns, do you do unicorns?’
“So we came back, cut the ears off the zebra and put a horn in him.
“We were doing wholesale with Rock of St George, an interior design company, for about six years and the unicorn went flying. But if you wait for the trend and try and do it, the trend’s over as each sculpture takes about three months.”
