#lost wax

[nickifortunati-warren]

Tumbled and done ✨🔥

Super happy with these pieces, the bunny is a little bit fragile and bendable, but other than that it was a successful cast and semester.

[thejewellerybox]

Mermaid pendant, Tabby Booth x Rare Bear Jewellery

Designed by artist Tabby Booth and expertly finished by jeweller Elle George (Rare Bear).

Cast with sustainably-sourced sterling silver, using the lost wax method, £135.

[blondebrainpowered]

Late 19th Century Japanese bronze Nitsuro Hikime (lost wax technique) Okimono group depicting Carp swimming in the shallows.

[jaybelle02]

I know it would be a massive project but I want to make a statue of myself, either carved out of wood or cast in bronze.

I might just make some small wax models first just for fun and to scratch that itch. I want to practice anatomy, I can already sculpt my face no problem but I haven’t made anything in so long it kinda hurts and I get scared that I can’t do anything anymore.

[inspofromancientworld]

Copper and Its Place in the Ancient World

By Jonathan Zander (Digon3) derivative work: Materialscientist - CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7223304

Copper is the 29th element of the periodic table, a soft, malleable (able to be formed by pressure), ductile (able to be drawn out) metal that is highly thermally and electrically conductive that is pinkish-orange when freshly exposed and pure and oxidizes a brown-black and will patina with a layer of verdigris, a copper carbonate layer that ranges from green to bluish-green, depending on the isotope of copper. It can be found naturally occurring unalloyed with other metals. Copper has two stable isotopes, copper-63 and copper-65, with the first being about 69% of naturally occurring copper on earth. Copper is created within massive stars as part of their nucleosynthesis thought the slow neutron capture (s-process). It is one of the few metals that is essential to all organisms that require oxygen as it forms part of the respiratory pathway. It was named for the island of Cyprus, with the Latin name being cuprum, which is where the chemical symbol Cu comes from.

By Daderot - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30938396

Copper is one of the first metals to be used, with its history going back as far as 9000 BCE in the Middle East, with a pendant found in Iraq that dates to about 8700 BCE. Based on evidence from the archaeological record, only gold and meteoric iron were used by humans before copper. Use of copper was so significant that an entire archaeological period was named for it, the Chalcolithic, or the Copper Age with the name derived from the Greek for copper, chalkos, which dates to about 6000-3500 BCE in the Middle East, falling between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. During this time, copper working went from hammering native copper without heating it to smelting it, or applying heat to the metal or ore to purify it.

By Bullenwächter, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14690470

The oldest known extraction of copper rather than working what is found on the surface that we've found dates to about 6500 BCE in the Old Copper complex around the Great Lakes of North America, while the earliest known evidence of hammering native copper dates between 7200-6000 BCE in Çayönü Tepesi in Anatolia. The oldest copper mine, where copper was dug out of the earth rather than just found on the surface, dates back to about the 4th millennium BCE in the Timna Valley in Israel, which was used for surface deposits in the fifth and sixth millennium BCE before that. Around 5000 BCE in Pločnik, Serbia, the first signs of high temperature smelting begin to appear in the archaeological record. In the Americas, copper smelting in Boliva began as early as 700 BCE, after copper working began in the Atacama Desert around 1432-1132 BCE. Studies of Ötzi the Iceman suggest that he was involved in copper smelting when he lived sometime between 3300-3200 BCE and he carried with him a copper axehead that was 99.7% pure.

By Oren Rozen - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10851056

Various forms of casting were developed throughout history. Lost wax is a process where a model is made out of wax or an oil-based clay around which a mold is made. Wax is then poured in to create a layer over the mold, which is removed from the mold to. A tree-like structure is then added to allow air to escape and to give more paths to add metal. The wax structure is then dipped into a slurry of ceramic to make a shell that is then placed in a kiln where the wax is melted and runs out as the ceramic is hardened. After this, the form is tested with water, to make sure it will flow freely through the tubes and that there are no leaks. It is then put back in the kiln to remove any moisture from the form. The form is then put into a container of sand where the molten metal will be poured into it while it is still hot. Once the metal is cooled, the ceramic container is hammered and dusted away. The resultant casting has any imperfections worked away and is polished. This process was developed around 4500 BCE around the Varna Necropolis in Bulgaria.

By Anonymous (Egypt) - Walters Art Museum: Home page  Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18791249

The Bronze Age also owes its name to copper, but this time alloyed with tin, which began around 4500 BCE, with the oldest known bronze artifacts created by the Vinča culture. Sumerians and Egyptians soon followed in around 3000 BCE. During this time, the Egyptians used cuproivaite, a calcium copper silicate, to create a synthetic pigment that became known as Egyptian blue, which they used in pottery glazing, to create a faience, an almost glass-like coating, around 3250 BCE and it continued to be in use through the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fourth century CE.

By Wilson44691 - self-made; Mark A. Wilson[1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3793641

Copper remained an important resource through the Iron Age. The ancient Greeks associated copper with Aphrodite because 'of its lustrous beauty and its ancient use in producing mirrors; Cyprus, the source of copper, was sacred to the goddess', which also led to it being associated with the planet Venus as it was the third brightest heavenly body after the Sun and Moon, which were associated with gold and silver respectively. Copper was used as money, first as lumps and later as coins among the Romans. The Romans pulled about 15,000 tons of copper out of their mines annually.

Source: https://sci-hub.ru/10.1016/j.jas.2019.105010

In Sub-Saharan Africa, copper was considered 'more precious and prestigious than either gold or silver' with mining beginning in about 2000 BCE around the Agadez region in Niger. It was widely traded while gold deposits were ignored.

[ferncrafts]

First ever attempt at bronze casting last fall. Mind you, done using bronze age methods! Obviously a fail, but one I’m quite fond of nonetheless. Last picture is of the original wax model, depicting a little ship reminiscent of the one engraved in one of the Rørby Scimitars and a sun wheel above it.

[annasiivonen]

Dicky sphynx cat jewelry

Jewelry with a surreal hairless phallus sphynx cat with dicks for ears, made in bronze and steel as pendants, rings, brooche and titanium ea

[ca1fskinsmack]

ok im back on tumblr after accidentally deleting my years old blog a while back.

recent metal work from an ongoing collab project <33