Making Bronze Casts From Pottery Clay

by Rakesh Soni
(Mumbai, India)

Making Bronze Casts From Pottery Clay:- I have started making sculptures one month back. I have made this small one at a local potter's place(so it must be potter's clay..I don't know).

One of my aim is to go for metallic sculptures. So will it be possible a mould can be made from sculpture made from potter's clay.

The sculpture here is very small. Big sculpture making would require some sort of support during the making so that soft clay stays in place. Do u have experience with making the big sculptures from potter's clay. If yes how it can be done.

Thanks

Soni

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Reply by Peter Holland (sculptor)

TO;- Making Bronze Casts From Pottery Clay

Dear Soni

Congratulations on a wonderful looking first sculpture. More to the point, congratulations on such a wonderful photograph.

Before I answer your queries, I will just first add a note to say that more than half the battle in becoming a professional sculptor (earning money from playing with clay) is knowing how to present yourself.

I won't go as far as to say the art is secondary to the presentation, but if you have beautiful art, but do not conduct yourself professionally or do not know how to present your work properly, than you will not progress.

So Soni, your presentation is truly an inspiration to this website. Well done for that.

Now, onto your queries.

Essentially, you have two queries. The first is about making your artwork into metal.

This is a regular procedure, and the normal medium is bronze. I am not an expert in this area, but a bronze caster may well prefer you not to fire your pieces as leather clay may be easier to cast up than fired clay. As I say, check this with your nearest bronze foundry.

Bronze can be made into any size.

In terms of whether you need an armature, of course once you place a metal or wooden armature, your item cannot be fired anymore, but it sounds like you do not want this option anyway. Some people use damp newspapers as armature, which can be fired once the piece is fully dry.

My own work is never bigger than 15 inches, but up to that size and possibly bigger I would never want to use an armature.

The reason for this is you build the clay up in stages, letting the first layers harden off somewhat before adding subsequent layers - and so on.

This technique normally produces a nice stable structure with which to work - unless you allow the clay to dry out, at which point it becomes fragile and can never be re-hydrated again to its former strength, and would just go mushy with the addition of water.

I write about clay management in my tutorials - just use the in-house search box located on every page, to search the term "clay management".

Best of luck and thank you again for the nice photo.

Peter Holland (sculptor)