Czech Downton Abbey fan earns royalties from his own Lego set

Czech artist Sebastian Veselka has turned a childhood passion for Lego and a love of British TV series into his own official Lego set — and will now earn a percentage of its sales worldwide.

Veselka designed a set based on the series Downton Abbey and submitted the project to the Lego Ideas programme, which lets fan designs go through a tough selection process to reach official sale by the company. His idea collected ten thousand user votes and, more importantly, won the approval of Lego's professional jury — something far from every participant in the programme manages.

According to the author, the idea for the set grew out of warm memories of watching the series with his mother and grandmother. “I came up with the set thinking of my mum and grandma, and of the time we spent together watching that cosy series. They gave me so much in life, and thanks to them my brothers and I fell in love with Lego,” Veselka said.

After the jury's approval, professional designers at the Danish company worked on the project, turning the Czech fan's original idea into its final commercial form. The Downton Abbey Lego set is already available on the Czech version of the Lego online store — it costs 7,349 crowns, includes more than 4,700 pieces and thirteen minifigures, among them Lord Grantham and his family, and the staff led by the strict butler Carson.

Under Lego Ideas' rules, Veselka receives one percent of the net revenue from sales of the set — turning his childhood hobby into a real source of income. This is not his first attempt to break through via the Ideas platform: he had previously tried to create a set based on the series Red Dwarf, which collected the required number of user votes but did not pass the jury's selection. Success came only with Downton Abbey.