About

Me & Duckingham Design

Duckingham Design is a one-man LEGO art studio based in the upstate of South Carolina. Under the name Duckingham Design, Chris Howard converts pictures and images into works of art made exclusively out of LEGO bricks.

No, this is not a picture from my personal studio. The picture is from our family trip to Disney World in the summer of 2006. Orlando has a huge LEGO store. And I was absolutely enoying myself. While writing this page, Maria reminds me that she took the picture. I said, “Oh, yeah. I forgot.” She said, “What, did you think that you took it?” I guess not. :)

What does the name “Duckingham” have to do with any of this?

When I was in high school I went to a friend’s house for an end-of-the-school-year camp out. Several of the other friends he’d invited I did not know. He introduced me and one of the guys said, “Oh, like Howard the Duck.” [for the uninitiated, Howard the Duck was a Marvel comic book character who was later used as the subject for one of the worst movies ever made] So for the remainder of high school and through most of my college years I was known as “Duck.”

Because of that nickname, I’ve used “Duck” or some other derivation of the word in lots of things. When playing videogames, I used to use the name “Megaduck” as a character name. Then, when I created my first email account I attempted to use “megaduck” only to get the generic message, “that name is already taken. But, you could be megaduck23 or megaduck79…” or something like that. That was a very sad day for me. But, after a few minutes of thought I came up with “duckingham” — it sounds cool, has a duck in it, and a British twist (think Buckingham palace). Only later did I discover that “Duckingham Palace” is a name used in various places for hoity-toity duck houses, and is also the name of another website that sells decorative duck stuff. It also appears to be an obscure last name. Regardless, I like the name, and used it for my first domain name, only recently coming to use duckingham.com as a branding for my LEGO-related business, since I find that I share the name “Chris Howard” with a number of other people in the world wide web who already seem to be making a name for themelves in their various aspects of work.

So, thanks for stopping by, taking the time to read through my pages, and please let me know if you’re interested in commissioning me to do a piece for you.

About me personally

I’m a long-time LEGO lover, recently coming to grips with the fact that I’m 32, and still don’t want to stop playing. :)

I was born and raised in Maine until I was 16. Also homeschooled for a few years. My family lived in Alabama for four years. I was there for one year before going off to college and grad school in Greenville, SC, where I have lived ever since.

I met my wife when she was a college freshman and I was a junior. We dated all four years of her college, and then got married. We now have four kids (two boys, two girls).

When I was very young I made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. Because of my young age, I faced a lot of doubt regarding my salvation, but have since re-committed my life, confessed my doubt, and appreciate God’s grace and forgiveness in my day-to-day life. We are members at Community Baptist Church in Greer, SC.

I got my first LEGO toys when I was four or five. I still love putting sets together and building new things. In recent months I have turned my attention toward creating artwork out of LEGO.