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Scott Sillcox

Scott Sillcox

Scott Sillcox was President and Owner of Toronto-based Maple Leaf Productions from 1993 to 2010 and during that time researched, designed and manufactured a family of products that celebrated the evolution of NFL, MLB, NHL, NCAA football and CFL team uniforms. At the heart of this entire project are the images of the uniforms themselves – hand-painted, original watercolor paintings on archival paper. These images were then used to create posters, framed prints, clocks, fridge magnets, playing cards, mousepads, collector plates, and many other products – each of which celebrated the history of a particular team’s uniform. In all, well more than 1500 uniforms were painted. When combined with over 300 pen and ink aerial view drawings of ballparks, stadiums and arenas that were also created, the 1800+ original pieces of art form what is believed to be the world’s largest collection of sports-themed art.

“I have been asked many times if I know of a bigger collection of sports art, and I have to say that I have never come across a collection as large as this”, claims Sillcox.

“To be honest, I can’t imagine anyone else being crazy enough to spend the time and money that we did to create such a massive collection of original art. It was a bit of an obsession for me, but as I look at the collection of original art that we created, I am extremely proud of each and every piece – each of the 1800 pieces of art has a story to tell.”

Over a period of almost 15 years, Sillcox spent many thousands of hours researching the history and evolution of stadiums, ballparks and arenas and especially uniforms of teams from the NFL, MLB, NHL, NCAA college football and CFL. After gathering vast amounts of source material, he then provided the research to a small team of highly skilled artists [see The Artists portion of this website]. In turn, the artists took the research and created highly detailed watercolor paintings based on the research material. Sillcox is a meticulous record keeper, and he created research files for every single season of every NFL, MLB and NHL team and many NCAA football teams. In all, Sillcox created more than 10,000 file folders full of newspaper clippings, photographs, photocopies, trading cards, media guides and much more.

The research allowed Sillcox and the artists to create a truly remarkable collection of sports art. The original watercolor paintings of uniforms, and the pen and ink drawings of stadiums, are owned by the artists, and in 2010 they decided to make many of their original pieces of art – more than 1800 pieces of art - available for sale to sports fans and art collectors. Now almost all of this remarkable original artwork is being offered for sale through Heritage Sports Art and this site, www.HeritageSportsArt.com.

Some people wonder “Why watercolor paintings of the uniforms, why not photographs?” As Sillcox explains, creating watercolor paintings was the way he could develop and maintain a consistent look and feel for the entire collection of sports uniform art, something that was very important to the success of the whole project.

“Even if we had access to the actual jerseys, which isn’t always possible if for no other reason than many of them no longer exist [of the 1500 uniforms, as many as 400 jerseys no longer exist], it would have been almost impossible to photograph each jersey in a continuously consistent viewpoint and light such that the final product would be able to properly tell the tale of a particular team’s uniform evolution. By creating highly detailed watercolor paintings, we could control the look and feel of each uniform such that when the team uniform evolution was shown as a collection, it would be pleasing to the eye of a fan.”

Thank you for visiting our site – I hope you see a piece of art that you might like to own yourself or that would make a wonderful gift for someone important in your life.
 

Read more about Scott and the Heritage Sports Art Collection below:
Uni Watch Profiles: Scott Sillcox
The Original Six - Canada's Best Selling Poster?
How and why does someone become a sports uniform history expert?
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