4' TALL BRONZE VADER

Limited Edition Darth Vader Bronze Statue by Lawrence Noble

This is an exclusive special order item. Once your order is placed a member of the StarWarsShop.com team will contact you to complete the order and make special shipping arrangements.

A few months ago, employees entering the lobby of Lucasfilm's Building A at the Presidio were greeted by a new member of the campus' growing family of bronze statues -- Darth Vader. While the Dark Lord may come from Yoda's corner of the galaxy (one of the first bronzes to be installed atop the fountain at the main entrance), Vader actually joins a set of historical figure bronzes already making a home at the Presidio, all courtesy of artist Lawrence Noble.

This beast can be yours for a mere $18,000, but for you die hard Star Was fans that is just a drop in the bucket! Post original found on GeekAlerts.com, and primary info for this article was found on StarWarsShop.com.

Noble, a lifelong Star Wars fan and accomplished artist, actually began his sculpting career with a diminutive Yoda bronze he'd created after seeing The Empire Strikes Back in 1980. He has since followed with scores of publicly-commissioned bronzes that include peace officers, firefighters, historical figures, and other American icons installed throughout the country's parks, memorials, and town centers

Like the now famous Yoda bronze adorning the Presidio fountain as well as Big Rock Ranch's garden court entrance, the half-scale Darth Vader bronze is also being made available to the public in extremely limited quantities--30--exclusively through StarWarsShop.

The inspiration for this Vader bronze, which was modeled after the Dark Lord's appearance in The Empire Strikes Back, ironically came from a source usually associated with the Star Wars prequels -- the planet Coruscant. "For me, the idea was to do the kind of statue we would see in honor and tribute to Lord Vader on the planet of Coruscant," says Noble. "So if you were walking around the city on Coruscant and saw a statue of Darth Vader, it would hopefully be something along the lines of what we produced."

Noble admits that the greatest challenge to sculpting figures in costume is capturing the essence of the personality without the benefit of an individual's most expressive feature -- the face. In Vader's case, Noble had to find other means to transmit the character of the Star Wars saga's central figure. "I tried to show a bit of the inner man, which was difficult because the inner man is behind a mask," he explains, suggesting Vader's character would need to be expressed through pose alone. "He's got a particular attitude -- he's got one foot raised on a little precipice which tells the story of where he might end up. There are cracks in the precipice, and he's taking a step towards his own destiny.

"Also, while the mask is static, the hands are not," he continues. "The hands are set in an anticipation of potential movement, to be detrimental or positive." Noble explains that the hands and positioning of the feet form a vague loop, leading the eye from one to the other. From this, the viewer might discern a bit of who Vader is and where he is going. "What I tried to do was lead the viewer on a little bit of an inner journey about the man," he says.

Each Vader bronze, which stands nearly four feet tall and weighs a whopping 150 pounds, was forged and assembled at a foundry close to Lucasfilm's Presidio campus, the same foundry responsible for producing several of the other bronzes adorning the parkland property the company occupies. Each bronze also received an individualized patina, making each piece a unique work of art unlike any other.

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