Bronze Casting
Wanting to challenge perceptions of traditional fine art foundry practice, we are very conscious of our rich cultural inheritance & enjoy its relationship with contemporary fine art.
Our bronze casting foundry employs many of the techniques within moulding, life casting, metal casting, patination, restoration & conservation.
We cast in non-ferrous metals including various bronzes & aluminium. Our moulds are also suitable for plastic or resin casting if required.
From figurative to non-figurative sculptures, portrait heads to large monuments & contemporary conceptual requirements, we pride ourselves in our reputation for producing high quality, unusual, experimental & innovative castings.
For the reasons mentioned above, our foundry has specifically chosen to employ the traditional lost wax (cire-perdu) method using the grog & ludo investment process. This technique is renowned for its ability to reproduce fine detail & provide opportunity for experiment. There are not many foundries of this type left, so make the most of us!
Our foundry is managed by Stephen Melton who graduated from the Royal College of Art’s Bronze Casting Foundry Course receiving the Angeloni Award for Best Founder & he has been casting since 1983.
Our experienced & friendly team are all artists themselves, each having at least a Bachelor of Arts Degree. They work on each piece from start to finish so the intricacies of your artwork are not lost through this lengthy process.
We are happy to embrace all or part of the process as you might want to do some of the casting yourself.
Please download our quote form & email it to us if you have a casting enquiry. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
Mould Making
Please see the mould making page for further details of this stage. We are happy to use your own moulds if they are suitable for the creation of waxes.
Wax Making
We encourage you to take an active part in this process. At the very least we ask you to check you wax before investment. This is a good time to sign your work, make alterations if necessary or extend the creative process. We also accept waxes to invest, if you can make your own.
Investing
Using the grog & ludo method we will invest your work to then be cooked & poured. We can also invest burnable objects like the bumble bee show above!
Cooking & Pouring Your Own Mould
As a result of our exciting course programme & in an attempt to make this process more affordable for people, we can cook and pour moulds brought to us. However, as with any of the bronze casting processes, we cannot take responsibility for an unsuccessful cast if you have completed some of the process yourself.
Chipping Out, Fettling & Chasing
We pride ourselves in the high quality metal work we can deliver. You will not see any work or welding marks on our castings which is the sign of an excellent cast.This could also be embraced by yourselves if you wanted to take your cast work away or use our workshop.
Finishing
We shot blast all works ready for patination. However, you could have your work highly polished if required.
Photographic Documentation
Throughout the process we keep you up-to-date via email, however you can ask us to document the process for you if required. We also can document finished works for your portfolio, just let us know.
Plinths & Stone Bases
If you would like us to mount your work, you can always order a plinth or stone base to be made.
Delivery & Installation
We can offer an outstanding delivery & installation service across the world.
If you would like us to provide you with a quote for some work, please fill in this form & email it to us.
For more information, please do not hesitate to contact us. If you would like to have a look at the profile of our teaching & technical staff here as well as Meltdowns’, we are putting together a profile archive for you. If you would like to attend one of our courses relevant to this process, please do have a look at our current programme. Finally, have a read, if you are interested in using the workshop yourself.
