All Helen’s bronzes are cast by Martin Bellwood at the MB Fine Art Foundry in Clynderwen, Pembrokeshire.
Bronze casting is a complex and time-consuming procedure.
It is a very ancient process: the earliest known bronze sculpture originates from India and is dated at around 5000 BC (some 2000 years before the beginning of the building of the pyramids in Egypt).
Despite the long-established tradition of the use of bronze, the basic technique of lost-wax casting remains essentially unchanged.
In order to produce a bronze cast, a mould is made of the original sculpture (the original sculpture can be made of anything).
From this mould a hollow wax is produced and a system of wax runners and risers is constructed around it (runners through which the bronze will flow and risers to allow air to escape ahead of the molten metal).
Another mould is made around and within this whole structure. This mould is made of a refractory material and is placed in a kiln in order for the wax to be burnt out. Thus a void is created into which the bronze is poured.
After the metal has cooled, the mould is chipped off revealing a bronze version of the wax construction.
The runners and risers (now bronze ‘rods’) are sawn off. The bronze sculpture is then finished using a variety of grinding tools, files etc. and the raw bronze is patinated, waxed and buffed.
The first mould (from which the wax is made) is often rubber, allowing for an edition of several casts to be made.
Some of my bronzes (like the giraffes and llamas) are ‘unique’ because they have been made from wooden originals (and/or cardboard, fabric, wax or anything that will burn away). This takes the place of the hollow wax (cast from the rubber mould) so the first moulding stage is omitted and the original is lost.
Almost any of my resin pieces can be cast into bronze (quotations available on request).
(Very approximately, a bronze would tend to be three or four times the cost of a resin cast and would take ten to twelve weeks.)