Quality Quidditch Supplies

Of all the shops in Diagon Alley, Quality Quidditch Supplies was probably Harry Potter’s favourite. He visited it often when he stayed at the Leaky Cauldron for three weeks (in the Prisoner of Azkaban), since the new Firebolt racing broom had just been introduced that summer and one was on display in the shop window. So this had to be the next Diagon Alley shop for me to model. Here is where I got to…

Official sets

Harry’s first visit to Diagon Alley was an eye-opener to the wonderful magical world. The movie captures this magic moment perfectly – where Harry and Hagrid walks along the various weird yet wonderful shops eventually getting to Quality Quidditch Supplies showing the brand new Nimbus 2000 in the shop window with kids lined up outside looking at it en awe.

And with Quidditch being such an important part of many of the books, it is not surprising that the shop has already featured as an official set, Quality Quidditch Supplies (set 4719) from 2003, which I reviewed a while back.

Much later, in 2018, it was among the shops included in the microscale Diagon Alley (set 40289), the second building from the right below, with the paintbrush cleverly representing a racing broom.

But I wanted a version that would match the scale and style of my previous models. So I started ordering some bricks!

Designing my model

In my previous Diagon Alley models (check the Locations page) I generally, with some artistic license, used the movie locations as main inspiration. But liking the original 2003 set, in this case I also wanted to stay true to its colour scheme while still trying to match the architecture seen in the movie (as per the photo below from the Harry Potter Studios in London, where the filming was done).

The shop front from the actual set on display at Harry Potter Studios Tour in London

So I maintained the dark orange bottom part of the building, the sand green roof, the lamp post and sign all from the original model, and otherwise built something that reasonably well represented the building seen in the movie. For comparison, here is the final version.

I actually started building the model during a previous exhibition, where my Diagon Alley setup was on display. Being busy at work, I often have very little time for building, and having a whole weekend with “LEGO’ing” was a too good opportunity not to use for progressing some models – and I must say the active building triggered a lot of interesting discussions during the weekend.

The Quidditch show mostly finished towards the end of the exhibition where I started building it.

More photos

Here are a few more photos of the model from various angles. Firstly, the front right – this side borders with the courtyard at the back of the Leaky Cauldron as seen from the photo above.

The front left look is a bit boring, as that side of the building will be covered by another building in the display. Unfortunately the roof had come out of alignment for the photo.

Unlike most of my other buildings, this one does not have an open back due to its location in the middle of the overall display. The backside instead features a door leading out to a small courtyard.

And finally – the completed model along with the neighbouring buildings as displayed recently (just before COVIC-19 put a halt to all exhibitions).

Other Diagon Alley locations

I’ve previously presented custom models of a number of other Diagon Alley locations. You can check them out on the Locations page – or use the links below:

Some of them can be seen on the photo below.