A BRONZE STATUE

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 52, 25 November 1930, Page 8

A BRONZE STATUE

Youth and Pegasus HOW IT IS MADE A Painstaking Labour Now that the bronze Victorions Youth and his Pegasus have been placed at the top of their 60ft pedestal, completing all but the finishing work of the Wellington War Memorial, It Is interesting to learn how such a large bronze statue is made. While admiring the completed work of art, there ean be few people who appreciate the immense amount of painstaking labour that goes Into the completion of such a statue. Statues of this size, especially, are not conceived and produced full size. A whole host of preliminary thumbnail statue outlines are first made in plasticine. These sketches may be made and remade for weeks until the sculptor has crystallised the best layout for the work. A slightly larger copy in plasticine is then made, including any final corrections or alterations in order that the original conception may not be lost as the work proceeds. A model of the contemplated statue is then made, and also in the case of pedestrian statues these models are quite small. The foundation consists of a rough wire skeleton on which clay is daubed. When this skeleton has been roughly shaped to the original sketch, final measurements and adjustments are made from a living model. This small model is then “nut into plaster” by professional moulders Possibly a small bronze casting is made. This plaster casting is then enlarged to full size. . .. The actual enlarging is done automatically by a machine similar, to a pantograph. Another armature is built up ot lathes, wire and plaster, for the large size model, until the effect is not unlike a huge crudely-made child’s rocking horse. With the aid of the enlarging machine, working from the original small casting, wires are inserted all over the. full-sized armature, so that the extremities of the wires represent the outside surface of the finished clay. Guided by the wires that bristle from the armature, the artist proceeds to build up in clay the full-sized statue as the man in the street will see it. When satisfied with the result a bronze casting is made from.it by moulding experts. This is done either by normal sand casting or by building up a wax copy of the statue: encasing it with plaster; heating the whole in an oven to melt out the wax which is replaced by molten final result, whichever method is used, is an exact replica of the original in hollow bronze. Except for a few minor finishing touches the statue 1S for mounting on its pedestal for all time.