Alex Bellinger

Alex Bellinger is from Alabama and was educated in New England, at the Gunnery, Boston University and Brown.  He studied History of Art but spent his career in the retail book business, managing bookstores in and around Boston for 35 years.  He and his wife Christina, a retired university librarian, live in Newburyport.

He started ship modelling very young, and picked it up again in college.  He apprenticed at the Peabody Museum of Salem where he cleaned and repaired models in the collection for nine years.  He is active with the USS Constitution Museum Guild, where he is a past Captain and Admiral.  He served on the Board of Directors of the Custom House Maritime Museum in Newburyport and is a former Editor of The Bottle Shipwright.  In 2020 he received a Fellowship in Traditional Arts from the Mass Cultural Council.

Most of his ship models have been made in bottles.  As well as creating the models and writing about them, he is a frequent speaker for modelling clubs, museums and community organizations.  He has also been teaching for over 30 years.  He sees great opportunities for ships in bottles in applying modern techniques, materials and modelling standards to the traditional maritime art.