Carves Cinema Celebrities in Cement

Mistress of Fontainbleau Develops Talent,
Latent Since Girlhood, in Novel Hobby of
"Cementing" Friendships With the Great

By Vera Palmer

What would you think if every time you looked out of the window you were to see Greta Garbo sitting in your garden? Not costumed to represent any of those characters that have given her world-wide fame, but clad merely in a very modern bathing suit and reclining in nonchalant ease on the edge of your lily pool, gazing pensively into its depths?

This is just what greets the eyes of Hylah Edwards Robinson at "Fontainbleau," her home in King William County, and it is she who is solely responsible for having the enchantress from Hollywood as an addition to her household.

This Greta may be slightly gray, but she is certainly neither dour nor old. She is a charmer in cement. Knowing that the other figures around are quite as immobile as herself, she has no dread of Nero, the king of beasts, crouching close to an entangling rose bush but a short distance away. Neither does she rear the seemingly ferocious enemy kept at bay by "The Defender." But Greta, Marlene, Jean and Shirley, all of whom may be found in this old Virginia garden, would not be there had not Mrs. Robinson felt she needed an outlet for her energy and talent. At first these celebrities were merely visitors, but now she is beginning to regard them as "paying" guests.

Just as the days of last summer were definitely drawing in, showing that the year was well on the wane, this ingenious woman remembered that in her youth she had longed to become an artist. She was then a student in high school here in Richmond. Her mother, who had lost a sister from taking cold while out sketching, discouraged Hylah from developing her talent for she had a feeling that this daughter might suffer a similar fate.

The girl did take art in school, but the course then was even more limited than it is today and because she returned for post-graduate study, she received a little more instruction than the average high school student. Mrs. Robinson declares she probably would not have taken that extra year had not her mother confronted her with the stocking basket, saying that if she remained at home, the family darning was to fall to her lot. She gave just one lingering look at the basket and returned to school.

Ordered Bag of Cement and Started

It was in early September of last year that this King William housewife, whose children are now grown, first thought of modeling in cement, although she had never taken a single lesson in that medium. Being a woman altogether undaunted by a small thing like that, she just sent to Richmond for a bag of the material. This she mixed with sand in about equal parts and started to work.

Astounded at the excellent results obtained, before the first heavy frost had appeared she had decided to make sculpture her avocation at least. Today, less than 12 months from the time that first bag of cement entered the gates of "Fontainbleau" there are many figures making themselves at home on the lawn. Adam and Eve are there as well as some the brightest stars of the celluloid world, who are, perhaps, the most pampered of all Eve's daughters. A small son of the sculptor, fashioned from a picture taken in babyhood, also has his place in the group. The artist, however, does not limit herself to portrait studies, for there is the crafty lion already mentioned and gay little girls without names carrying on their tireless heads wide shallow bowls which are intended for bird baths and appreciated accordingly. There are, too, allegorical groups.

Mrs. Robinson heartily believes in using materials close at hand, regardless of how mundane and remote from the artistic were their original purposes. An automobile tire serves for the mould for the edges of the bird baths, while the carved part of an old bed, made into a kind of box, is the form employed for the backless seats of rich "carving" which are placed here and there where they are best suited to the charming spot.

This former resident of Richmond follows the method of using iron braces against which to build her figures. There is nothing unusual about them. They are just pieces of iron picked up on the place or on those of her neighbors. If any shaping is required it is done at the local service station. Gray cement is used until the figure approaches completion, and then the white is substituted for the surface and to such depth as to insure an even color tone. Sometimes the faces are modeled separately and then attached, but Mrs. Robinson is not dependent on this process.

Shirley Temple Still "Unfinished Business"

Living quietly in the country where there are few diversions to distract attention, this sculptor has long been an avid reader of magazines, especially those devoted to Hollywood. It is to their illustrations that she goes for her models. Little Shirley Temple, smiling beneath her curls, sure never suspected when sitting for her photograph that it would cause her to repose in cement in an old-fashioned garden of the other side of a vast continent. Perhaps Shirley would have smiled more broadly had she realized its use.

On a recent visit to "Fontainbleau" we were led to the quaint little studio at the bottom of the garden, used in pre-artistic days as a tool house. Mrs. Robinson said she had been working many hours that day on Shirley, who had not yet emerged from that state of "unfinished business." The pages of a magazine were turned back, showing that precocious youngster smiling gaily as if she enjoyed watching herself evolve from a bag of cement into a well-nigh breathing being.

Probably the retiring Greta would be terribly shocked did she know that her counterpart is welcoming all Mrs. Robinson's visitors, clad in a daring swimming suit, regardless of the hour, the weather or the company.

Then we inspected the implements used by this self-taught sculptor who has real talent, and were surprised to learn that they were only a few small knives of various shapes. When Mrs. Robinson makes long and sweeping strokes she does resort to the carving knife, for which a whole dollar was paid several years ago. This is the only known instance of Mr. Robinson withholding his full cooperation from his gifted wife, but the head of the house just had a particular liking for that efficient knife. He regretted seeing it sacrifice so vigorous a career to the indefinite cause of art. Yet he tried to understand that a knife so skilled would have to live its own life, even if it meant carving out a future far removed from severing fowl. Mr. Robinson is not only an appreciator of art, but Mr. Robinson is a philosopher.