1970s Syd Mead Hypervan Design Concept Art Model Modernist Future Hand Sculpted Original

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This is my probably my favorite piece i have picked up over the years. This is a hand crafted and … Read more This is my probably my favorite piece i have picked up over the years. This is a hand crafted and created by one of my favorite artists Syd Mead. This is a concept art/original design model of his Hypervan. You can see this vehicle in many of his paintings and is the most recognizable for sure.
Syd mead is an absolute icon in his category and was way ahead of his time. He is by far my favorite artist and this is a very special piece to me. and probably many others out there. You can find some of his original drawings,sketches, and paintings here and there but this is the only original model i have seen come up for sale. I was very lucky to acquire this piece years ago.
The Syd Mead Hypervan Model
As noted higher up, this is a scale model of the Hypervan, one of Syd Mead’s most famous automotive designs.
This model measures in at 18 x 5.5 x 6.75 inches or approximately 46 x 14 x 17 cm. It’s made from resin and has a metal plated body that features many details from the original illustrations, including various vents, shut lines, tail lights, and pivot points for the front wheel shrouds.
This piece was hand sculpted then chrome dripped. The tires,vents, and a couple small areas on back are made of hand sculpted resin and were added after the dipping process.

To own an original Syd Mead piece of art really is not something everyone gets a chance at. There are articles online written about this piece and the Hypervan history. I would encourage you all read up if you are not familiar.

This item came from a VERY reputable auction house and documentation will be included.

Here is a little bit of info pulled from one of these articles:
This is a scale model of the Hypervan, it’s one of Syd Mead’s best-known designs and that’s really saying something, as the full catalogue of his work is vast, and vastly influential.

For whatever reason Syd Mead is not listed as an artist on this site ( a crime a know) so when it under the artist/designer section where it says "unknown" please ignore that.

Syd Mead is probably best-known for his set and vehicle design work on the seminal 1982 science fiction film Blade Runner directed by Ridley Scott and based on Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The film stars Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Daryl Hannah.

Over the course of his decades-long career, Mead would establish relationships with the likes of Sony, Minolta, Dentsu, Dyflex, Tiger Corporation, Seibu, Mitsukoshi, Bandai, NHK, and Honda, contributing industrial design work that strongly influenced the retrofuturistic design ethos that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s.

One aspect of Mead’s career that’s often overlooked is the extensive interior design work he did. Some of the most challenging was the interior design of private aircraft including the Boeing 747 that belonged to King Fah’d of the Royal House of Saudia Arabia. He also designed the interior of the 747 that belonged to the Royal House of Oman, and the 727 that belonged to the Sultan of Brunei.

Mead died in late 2019 at the age of 86, his career spanned a remarkable 60 years from 1959 to 2019. His work remains highly-influential today, and it’s studied in-depth by many industrial design students as well as students of automotive design, architecture, and interior design. See less