Creating Space by Mat Irvine

For my birthday, my Brother-in-law and family bought me this book - Creating Space by Mat Irvine. A soft bound book full of colour illustrations and lists of space kits and space kit manufacturers.

A journey through the history of the Space Age up to the present and beyond. 352 pages and more than 170 illustrations in full colour, 500 photographs and listings for over 250 modelling subjects and kit manufacturers.

Full details are; Creating Space, The Story of the Space Age Told Through Models, by Mat Irvine and published by APOGEE - ISBN 1-896522-86-6, with a published price of £24.95.

In reviewing the book, I am full of praise both for the content and the layout, to me this is a perfect present, one that A - I was not aware of, and B - a book that I might not have bought myself, however I have had great fun, delving in to this reference work, searching out plastic kits that I either owned or 'longed for' as a young boy.

The beautifully illustrated full-colour photos of old and modern kits is like stepping back into an Aladdin's Cave of Sci-Fi modelling kits, all the more interesting for the reference material, detailing the actual kit, its history and the relevance of the source material. As stated earlier, for me a great read and one that I have no issue in fully recommending.

Then the bonus - during the IPMS Model Show at Telford, earlier this month Mat Irvine was attending and I was able to meet him and congratulate him, in person for this book and the fantastic and original model display, see below.

There are many references to Mat on the Internet, but I would direct anyone interested in his work to start with his own site - Smallspace;

http://www.smallspace.demon.co.uk/

Tony