Best of BrickNerd: Weekend Highlight — Article originally published April 23, 2021.

Mike Doyle’s “Victorian on Mud Heap,” My all-time favourite LEGO build. (Photo: Mike Doyle) — Mike Doyle’s *“Victorian on Mud Heap,”* My all-time favourite LEGO build. (Photo: Mike Doyle)

I’m sure a lot of you will recognise the situation I’m about to describe:

You’re at a point in your life where you have rediscovered LEGO. You have started looking at other people’s MOCs online, and every time you see something new and impressive you go, “Wow! That looks awesome.” And then, one day, you come across something that, at first glance, doesn’t seem to be LEGO. Maybe you even wonder what it’s doing in your feed. Then you recognise a particularly familiar LEGO part, you suddenly realise the scale of the thing (see the image on the right) and your jaw hits the floor.

Maybe the model on your screen (or live, at a show) leaves such a lasting impression that nothing will ever give you quite the same feeling again. It’s quite simply the most impressive thing you’ve ever seen built with LEGO bricks.

For me, that thing is Mike Doyle’s “Victorian on Mud Heap.” It’s a stunning work of art, which just happens to be made using the medium of small, interlocking plastic bricks. The scale of the model is difficult to comprehend, but don’t worry, I’ll help you with that.

The masterpiece was posted on Flickr almost ten years ago, on September 28th, 2011, and I probably saw it that same day. I say probably because I can’t remember, but the comment I left is the 14th of the 106 on the site, which means it must have been early. The comment also sums up my feelings:

After that, I obviously started following Mike on Flickr. Eventually, I joined the AFOL community, attended my first event at Skærbæk in 2012, and got to know a huge amount of people, many of whom have some incredible LEGO building skills. But I still haven’t seen anything that has wowed me to the extent that Mike’s build did ten years ago, even though I only saw it on my screen.

The Odan Project, as it appeared at the time of the Kickstarter campaign. (Photo: Mike Doyle)

Helping a Master Builder Out

“Victorian on Mud Heap” was actually the third instalment in Mike’s series of dilapidated houses, which started with “Two Story with Basement,” posted on Flickr in September 2010, a few months after he came out of his Dark Ages, and “Three Story Victorian with Tree,” posted in January 2011. But not long after I became aware of Mike’s work, he launched a Kickstarter campaign with the aim of raising money (a necessity when every MOC you build consists of more than 100,000 pieces!) for his next huge idea, The Odan Project (pictured on the right).

I was thrilled with the idea of being able to contribute to a new masterpiece by what I considered to be the best LEGO artist around, so I pledged, but the project ended up unsuccessful. Instead, it evolved into something even bigger, CONTACT 1: A 200,000 Piece LEGO Masterwork, which was successfully funded in May 2013. From that project, I received some prints and a little model inspired by the architecture in the bigger model—the “Seer’s Meditation Tower” which you can see on display in my cabinet in the slideshow below.

However, when Mike first published the in-progress pictures of the Odan project on his Flickr, I posted a comment, which he responded to:

As I mentioned, the Odan campaign never made it, so I didn’t get that Victorian print I wanted, even if my CONTACT pledge meant I got the other nice things in the picture above (prints and models from that project seem to still be available through Mike’s dedicated Odan page here, although I can’t guarantee it as other parts of the site seem to be offline).

I reached out to Mike and asked if it would be possible to get a print if I added some extra dollars to the pledge, to which he replied that I could just go to his website and purchase one—then I wouldn’t have to wait until the pledge packages were shipped to receive it. I then went to his site (which sadly doesn’t have anything for sale anymore) and found prints for sale… but then I was intrigued to see that he had also offered something he called “Print + Chunk.”

My favourite part of the build, with emphasis on “my.”

Mike explained that he had been selling off some carefully chosen parts of the actual “Victorian on Mud Heap” to fund his expensive/extensive building habits. When I asked if he had any chunks left, he told me that the fridge located on the awning above the ground floor of the house was the only thing available, and that I should know that it’s not an entire fridge, but rather the two sides of it that are visible in the picture.

I jumped at the possibility! That fridge sticking out of the wall is such a central part of the model that being able to actually own that was something I just couldn’t resist. Mike even gave me a discount (as if I needed an extra incentive) and I bought it straight away, eagerly anticipating its arrival.

The Perils of Shipping

Yeah, you read that right. About three weeks later I was notified that a package was waiting for me at my local post office, so I went to get it. When the guy behind the counter handed it over, my heart sank immediately. The sound that the package made when moved around was immensely discomforting, especially as I knew it contained something that was essentially priceless and most certainly not supposed to remind me of the (then joy-inducing) feeling of shaking a square package at Christmas to find out if it’s LEGO.

Not really what you want to see when you’ve bought a priceless chunk of a LEGO masterpiece.

“Can I have instructions?” is a well-known phrase among LEGO builders, most frequently asked by people seeing pictures of a lovely model and simply assuming that as long as there’s a model, there must surely be instructions for it. Well, I was hoping Mike would have something I could work from.

Before I had time to ask, though, he actually sent me an email to let me know to handle the fridge “with great care” as most of it wasn’t glued! By that point, I had certainly noticed, so I replied that I was slightly shocked that it hadn’t been more properly padded and that in its current state, it wasn’t really worth what I paid (even with the discount!) as it was really just a pile of bricks.

In Mike’s defense, he had shipped out the other chunks to other fans of his works without encountering destruction on this level, so I can understand how he assumed the padding would be sufficient. The state of the package was probably due to the added duration of the shipping, plus more people handling the package, considering it traveled overseas. He actually offered to give me my money back.

Reconstruction

That’s not really what I wanted, though, I still wanted a recognisable chunk of his masterpiece, so it needed to be put back together. I asked if he had any good high-resolution pictures, but apparently he didn’t really have anything that would be ideal for my purpose—what I got was something like what you can see on the right:

The actual image has disappeared from my email server, so this is my reproduction of what was essentially a blown-up section of the main picture. But after getting confirmation that what I’d received was basically two sides of the fridge plus “possibly some of the top” I started fiddling with it, and after about an hour or so of looking at the blown-up picture, while making educated guesses about what the support structure in the back must look like, I had something resembling the thing in the pictures. Mike agreed that it looked pretty accurate.

Hand for scale. Not the biggest hand, I admit, but you get the point. It’s 27 studs tall.

And it. Is. Absolutely. MASSIVE!

Go back up and look at the main picture, and see how small the fridge is compared to the whole build. Then look at my hand in the pictures above. Granted, I don’t have huge hands, but still… I knew the Victorian was big, but it’s still almost impossible to comprehend something as gargantuan and detailed as that built from LEGO bricks. The fridge is 27 studs tall. That’s almost the width of a standard-sized LEGO modular building!

The fridge in its current home—my “trophy cabinet” between a lovely miniature model of the original LEGO factory in Billund, Denmark and a bunch of event swag, including a few Nerdlies.

As I mentioned in my previous article, “How I Ended Up With the World’s Cheapest Mr. Gold,” when I moved to a bigger apartment a few years ago, I bought a proper display cabinet for some of my most prized possessions, and obviously, the fridge has a central place in there. And writing this article has pushed me to finally hanging up that lovely print of the Victorian on the wall above my build space - albeit still in its plastic wrapping. I’ll have it framed properly at some point.

The build space in my “LEGO room” (It doubles as a guest room—if I rearrange all the boxes you can’t see in the picture, there’s just about room for two people on the sofa bed. Just about). I think we can all agree that this is what a build space no… — The build space in my “LEGO room” (It doubles as a guest room—if I rearrange all the boxes you can’t see in the picture, there’s just about room for two people on the sofa bed. Just about). I think we can all agree that this is what a build space normally looks like, not tidy and clean as in most pictures people share…

I’ve mentioned earlier that I like rare LEGO items, like Mr. Gold. The item featured in this article, though, is rare on a whole different level. There’s only one fridge, and when you look at it, it’s easily recognisable as the same fridge as in the Victorian. And knowing that I own an actual part of the single-most impressive LEGO build I’ve ever come across, fills me with joy! You may or may not understand this or be able to relate to it, but it really does.

It Spoke to Me!

It’s not entirely unusual to buy a part of or even an entire LEGO creation that just hits you in some profound way. I myself own a couple of MOCs from the collection of late LEGO designer Daniel August Krentz (of 375/6075 Yellow Castle fame) that I was lucky enough to obtain. And back when I was involved with the now-defunct Bricks Culture magazine, I wrote about Amanda Feuk (incidentally featured in another recent BrickNerd article!) who displayed “The Tree” at Brickworld Chicago in 2015 and ended up selling it to fellow attendee Steve Jackson, of Steve Jackson Games, creator of the Munchkin card game.

“The Tree” by Amanda Feuk, on display at Brickworld Chicago 2015. Can you see why it spoke to Steve Jackson?

“It spoke to me!” said Steve. “I’m still not sure of everything it said, but the ‘take me home!’ part was clear. (…) I have never just walked up to an artist at a show before and said ‘It’s beautiful—will you sell it?’” I believe it eventually ended up in his office in Austin, Texas.

His sentiment fits perfectly with my feelings for the little chunk of “Victorian on Mud Heap” that now sits in my cabinet. It spoke to me, at a time when I had no idea that LEGO bricks would again become such a big part of my life.

(If you are, like me, completely flabbergasted by “Victorian on Mud Heap” and would like to see more of it, there are disappointingly few pictures available online apart from the one used at the top of this article—probably because it was built to be seen from one angle only. However, a few detail shots and in-progress pictures are still available on Mike’s Bēhance page. The Victorian, along with several of Mike’s other builds, is also featured in his own book Beautiful LEGO.)

Have you ever bought, or tried to buy, a LEGO creation that was just so amazing that you couldn’t help making an attempt to own it? Or have you built something that just appealed to somebody else in that same way? What prized, unique possession is sitting in your cabinet? Let us know in the comments below!

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