Jeté, a bronze by Enzo Plazzotta at Millbank, Westminster, London
A bronze sculpture of Richard the Lionheart (Richard the First), outside Parliament, London, England. Sculpted in 1860 by Carlo Marochetti
Bronze is the most popular metal for cast metal sculptures; a cast-metal sculpture of bronze is often called a bronze. Common bronze alloys often have the unusual and very desirable property of expanding slightly just before they set, thus filling the finest details of a mold.
The manufacture of bronzes is highly skilled work, and a number of distinct casting processes may be employed, including lost-wax casting (and its modern-day spin-off ceramic shell casting), sandcasting and centrifugal casting. In the lost-wax casting method, the artist starts with a full-sized model of the sculpture, most often a clay model. A mold is made from the clay pattern; a wax is then cast from the mold. The wax is then invested in another kind of mold or shell, which is heated in a kiln until the wax runs out. The investment is then filled with molten bronze.
The French name is "Cire Perdue", and the technique has been used for castingbronzestatues over many centuries.
When used in glassmaking, an original model for the glass item is first carved from wax (much easier to form complex detail as shown the picture on the left, which is part of a vase by Rene Lalique).
A plaster mould has then been formed and this is either filled with molten glass (to produce a figurine or statue) or a gather of molten glass is blown into the plaster mould to form a vase.
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