Lockbund Sculpture Foundry
Placement Residency

An insight into foundry process and practice

Reach out

Whilst liaising with the foundry, I was in conversation with Lockbund about how the placement would take shape. They were keen to make the most of my time with them and were incredibly flexible accommodating my university schedule. We agreed on one day a week, with occasional additional days coordinated around specific processes taking place within the foundry.

They arranged to simultaneously take 3–5 pieces of my work through the casting process, while also involving me in and helping me understand larger projects from other clients. They mentioned that they had never previously had a mature student undertake a placement with them, as most work experience is aimed at secondary school students and typically takes place over a single week.

The combination of my technical background and relative maturity placed me in a unique and privileged position to fully engage with the processes being taught and to make the most of the experience.

I met up with Adam the manager to have a walk round of the foundry talk about what they do. He took me round each of their rooms and to their other site where they do larger projects and the metal finishing. After an hour of talking about what I was keen to learn and be immersed in the process Adam said they were more than happy to accept me for a placement with the intention processing some of my work alongside their current projects to give a comprehensive understanding taking objects through each stage.

Day 1 — Mould Making / Wax Work

First Impressions

Met Adam and the wider team across departments. I arrived fairly anxious and apologetic, trying to prove my competence immediately. The atmosphere was surprisingly warm for such a technical industrial environment — close-knit, slightly chaotic, and shaped by the rural setting around the foundry.

As discussed, I brought a selection of objects from my practice to begin the casting workflow, some already in brown casting wax and transferable. Other pieces were used for learning mould making.

The daily 11am tea, coffee, and peanut butter on toast felt less like a break and more like a ritual check-in. Conversation meandered while I quietly tried to settle into the environment.

Mould Making

Started my first silicone mould. We began by “laying up,” building a flush clay divide before applying silicone. Much of the process comes down to anticipating release points and avoiding undercuts before the mould locks itself around the form.

Registration marks are carved into the clay to align both halves. I found these strangely organic — like connective tissue or internal organs pressed into the surface.

Silicone Application

Alfie demonstrated the silicone process: first a thin detail coat, then a thicker structural backing layer. Rather than dragging across the surface, the silicone is rolled using surface tension to push air from pockets without trapping it.

Trapped air creates blanks in the wax called “spuds” — amorphous nodules in the cast. Air trapped within the second layer expands when hot wax enters the mould, causing dimples and deformation.

The technique feels completely counterintuitive at first. Every instinct tells you to drag or lift your hand away from the surface. James and Alfie repeated the process several times while I tried to understand how the material wanted to behave.

By the end of the day I began spruing my flattened thumbs sculpture. Sprues act as channels for bronze and escaping air, but their placement requires anticipating flow, air pockets, shrinkage, and structural support simultaneously.

Wax Work / Spruing

In the afternoon Adam and I discussed how my wax finger sculptures could be prepared for casting. Although already made in wax, they ideally needed reworking into a more controlled hollow form to homogenise wall thickness and ensure even contraction during cooling.

The branching wax networks feel strangely sculptural in themselves. The technicians’ decisions appear instinctive, while I am still trying to understand the logic behind them.

Brown wax is difficult: unstable, soft, and quick to attract dirt. Most foundries instead use harder refined waxes such as green casting wax.

Day 2 — Silicone / Investment

Silicone / Mould Work

Picking up where I left off, I began my second mould with more confidence in both the laying-up process and silicone application. James still stepped in for final checks, reminding me of the technique as we applied the second silicone coats and keys.

These keys act as registration points, allowing the silicone to lock accurately into the rigid shell applied later in the process.

I absolutely love the visuals of the deformed hand submerged in silicone.

While assisting with walling off another client’s work, I asked how long it takes to get over the nervousness of handling other people’s sculptures. The response was fairly universal: there is simply not enough time to work cautiously forever, and mistakes are inevitable. What matters is understanding how and why they occur, and knowing they can usually be remedied.

Learning / Confidence

I have a tendency to overanalyse the “why” behind each step and only really settle once I feel competent. Watching James, the head mould maker, work with speed, confidence, and humour — while lightly mocking my tentativeness — was oddly reassuring.

It reinforced that not being immediately good at something is a necessary part of learning and helped counter some of my perfectionist paralysis and fear of failure.

Investment Room

In the afternoon, I worked in the investment room with Harry, Harry, and Theresa. They took me through the next stage of the process, where waxes are coated in alternating layers of ceramic and sand to build a negative shell around the form. My thumbs sculpture, which I had sprued the previous week, had built up enough layers to be “wired up.” Harry explained that because of the weight and heat of molten bronze, investments require reinforcing with wire support structures. These bands are generally spaced around two fingers apart, though I quickly learned there are many exceptions depending on the form.

I felt slow and inefficient during the process, though it already seemed clear that much of the work comes down to repetition and rhythm.

Process Aesthetics

Coming into the placement, I was eager to see the casting process, the longer I spend there, the more fascinating the surrounding material languages and process aesthetics become. The zircon sand layers are visually stunning and almost alien, especially combined with the wire supports and sprawling sprue networks.

Day 3 — Fibreglass / Investment / Pouring

Fibreglass Shells

To complete my hand mould, it needed a fibreglass mother mould. The mould-making team were already producing a series of larger shells, so I was able to gain some hands-on experience working at a larger scale.

Wiring up investments also continued throughout the day.

Investment Structures

Later in the afternoon I learned more about how investments are reinforced for pouring. Wire structures are wrapped under tension around the ceramic shell to strengthen it against the weight and pressure of molten bronze. The support patterns vary depending on the form and scale of the piece, balancing reinforcement with accessibility during later removal and finishing.

The combination of wire structures, hyper-texturised zircon sand surfaces, and sprawling sprue networks continues to build a fascinating material language. What initially appeared purely functional increasingly feels sculptural in its own right.

Cores / Pre-Firing

We also continued investing my other pieces, one of which had progressed to the final plaster coat applied over the wired shell.

Depending on the internal cavities of a sculpture, plaster cores are introduced during the wax stage before investment. Nails are strategically inserted into smoother areas before plaster is poured into the cavity. Once the wax is melted out, these nails hold the core in position within the mould, maintaining an even gap for the bronze to flow through and ensuring a consistent wall thickness.

I was also shown the investments being pre-fired before pouring. Bringing the moulds gradually up to temperature is essential to avoid thermal shock; if molten bronze meets a cold or damp shell, the temperature difference can cause explosive cracking and catastrophic mould failure.

Day 4 — Wiring / Process / Authorship

Wiring Up

Today largely revolved around wiring up and investment work. I began learning some of the subtleties behind reinforcing complex moulds — tensioning the ceramic shell to withstand the weight and impact of molten bronze during pouring.

The work is repetitive, but the repetition gradually reveals the logic behind the process.

Process Aesthetics

Throughout the day I kept noticing visual similarities between these functional support structures and artists whose work foregrounds process rather than concealing it. The ceramic shell, exposed wax, sprues, wire, and residual surfaces all possess their own aesthetic language before ever becoming bronze.

I’d like to experiment with partially coated shells or exposed wax forms in my own work.

Foundry Structure / Shared Authorship

The work was repetitive but enlightening, I finally have started having more joking conversations with everyone and begin to feel more at ease within the company.

Speaking with Adam, I learned more about the economics of casting. Stainless steel, while cheaper materially, is significantly more expensive to process due to the labour involved in chasing and finishing. I also learned that the foundry operates around a relatively small number of major ongoing clients, with irregular commissions filling the gaps between.

One long-term collaborative relationship in particular appears to have shaped much of the foundry’s development.

Artists often want to remove traces of production from the final object, Yet many of the intermediary stages contain material qualities and aesthetic possibilities that I find more compelling than the resolved final surface.

The additive steps in the process have fascinating material charactistics. If these where to be left in the final bronze, it would act as a cementing of all material processes involved preceeding the final object, im interested in a shared authorship between artist, technician process and material properties and how their pressence in the final object, and as such reframing the interest in the object from artists “genius” or intent and more of a participatory show and tell of discovering new material aesthetics.

Day 5 - 02/03/26

First thing i finished working on my hand mould, removing the clay layup. The mould making team was out on a site visit so I worked based off my notes and advise i was given previously.

for the rest of the day learned wax working techniques.

Wax

Wax within the foundry operates cyclically. Once melted out during investment, it is filtered and reused repeatedly. New harder waxes are periodically introduced to maintain the detail-retaining qualities necessary for casting.

Different waxes carry different properties:

blue wax is harder and often used for carving/jewellery
green wax balances rigidity with workable detail correction
brown wax is softer, tackier, and highly pliable

The colour system acts as both categorisation and quality control.

Tools

I became increasingly fascinated by the foundry’s wax-working tools. Alongside traditional clay and dental tools are countless modified homemade implements: shaped hacksaw blades for flooding imperfections with wax, bent butter knives for welding surfaces together, old household irons repurposed for flattening mould bases.

Many of the tools feel shaped as much by years of use as by their original function. The butter knives in particular — layered with residue, oxidisation, and wear — almost feel like sculptures themselves.

Day 6 — 23/02/26

Silicone / Foundry Culture

Only a short day finishing the final coat on a silicone mould, though I ended up learning something unexpectedly revealing about the foundry culture itself.

I noticed Harry putting an old crucible to one side and learned that crucibles have a working lifespan before slag build-up makes them unreliable for further pours. Rather than being discarded, staff often take them home as planters. Apparently they are highly sought after within the workshop, with people informally calling dibs as they become available.

I liked the idea of them acting almost as accidental markers of time spent within the foundry:

“How long have you worked here?”
“About six crucibles.”

Even discarded industrial objects seem to accumulate a strange social and material value within the environment.

Lockbund Foundry / Far Far Gallery — 07/03/26

NEVER DONE Opening

During one of the daily coffee breaks, Adam mentioned the foundry’s gallery space. When I was first shown around the site, the original gallery appeared half-disused and functioning mostly as storage, so I assumed exhibitions had slowed down. In reality, they had recently opened a new purpose-built gallery nearby, with its first exhibition launching the previous November.

The following weekend I visited the opening of NEVER DONE, the gallery’s second exhibition.

The space itself is beautifully converted from an agricultural building, retaining much of its exposed structure and rural character. The exhibition included drawing, painting, photography, casts, and sculpture, creating an interesting overlap between foundry practice and broader contemporary art contexts.

One of the more interesting conversations throughout the evening revolved around whether artists should discuss the processes behind their work. Personally, I think this is entirely contextual. Most artists I know seem far more comfortable discussing process — the “how” as a route into the “why” — rather than beginning from overarching conceptual frameworks.

Seeing the foundry connected so directly to exhibition-making and artistic networks expanded my understanding of what this kind of environment could offer beyond technical production alone.

Day 7 - 09/03/26

Pouring / Acid / Chasing

My fingers have been poured! begining to remove the investment shell is deeply satisfying, I almost dont want to remove it entirely but for the purposes of understanding the process start to finish It can be somethin i investigate in the future. Once the shell is knocked off it goes into acid to eat away at the remaining ceramic and plaster in and on the bronze.

Whilst placing the fingers into the acid we retrieved my thumbs ready for processing. I loved the remains of the wireing up process left in tact. They had to be removed prior to chsing. but i makes me think about these incidental cumlative textures patterns and parts throughout the process. I may go back and wire it up again after the patina process.

Talking with Theresa she explained that the nails used to hold the core in the fingers needs to be removed other wise it reacts with the acid creating a iron oxide. This isnt harmful just causes minor additional cleaning to the process. However the colour is stunning, a very rich almost coral pink copper red combination that my camera couldnt do justice.

Going up to the Chasing workshop i got to see larger scale wax works being prepared. They core the waxes the same as they do at small scale but they add cut nails in the core in this circlular pattern. I dont understand its purpose its not connected to the wax, ill ask next time im in. with such a large core it needs a lot of screws to hold the core in place relative to the investment to create a stabel cavity.

(Later clarified that these cut nails are used to hold the investment moulds of the ground and their flat nature stops them from rotating and falling out. its interesting the repurposing of these traditional floorboard nails to have a valid and specific purpose in the process)

Day 8 - 19/03/26

Chasing / Fettling

My fingers were finally out of the acid and ready for chasing — or fettling, though I still need to clarify the distinction between the terms.

I began by wire-wheeling the surface to remove oxidation left from the acid bath. Because the wire is softer than the bronze, it cleans the surface without damaging finer detail. After this, I cut away the sprues using an angle grinder before flattening and refining the base with grinding discs and sandpaper. The base was then drilled and tapped.

The process is physically repetitive but satisfying. There is something rewarding about gradually moving an object from a raw industrial state into a resolved surface.

In the afternoon, we began discussing patination and the heating of the metal. Before applying patina, the bronze is heated to remove ambient moisture from its surface. It felt strange to think of metal as holding moisture in this way, but the process helped clarify how patination functions chemically. Philippe explained that natural patina develops through repeated cycles of moisture, oxidation, drying, and condensation on exposed bronze surfaces. Foundry patination accelerates this process through heat and the application of diluted chemical compounds that react with the copper content of the bronze, rapidly building colour and surface deposits.

He also explained that heated bronze moves through different colour ranges. At certain temperatures the metal begins “bluing,” producing an iridescent sheen across the surface. Seeing these colour shifts emerge directly through heat made the material feel unexpectedly active and unstable rather than fixed or inert.

Day 9 - 23/03/26

Stainless Steel / Repetition

I spent the day processing stainless steel sections for assembly, cutting and grinding down sprue connection points before wire-wheeling the surfaces ready for polishing.

The work was repetitive but strangely enjoyable. Fettling and polishing have always been satisfying processes for me — physically demanding, but methodical and direct. It also gave me a better understanding of the pace and rhythm of day-to-day commercial production work.

Im continually facinated by the offcuts generated through casting. The cups and sprues strange industrial artefacts — resembling somewhere between coronets, roots, and medievil lance tips (coronels) designed to disperse force. They are in abundance and individually unique. Id be interested to see them assembled in sequence on mass to explore their iterative nature.

I’ve been thinking a lot about repetition and iteration within sculptural production, particularly how subtle variations emerge between objects shaped through the same process.

Day 10 — 30/03/26

Patina

Philippe spent much of the day introducing me to patination and explaining how different chemicals react with bronze surfaces and with one another.

Most patinas are chemically reactive oxides or nitrates that “bite” into the bronze surface rather than simply coating it. Heat accelerates these reactions, making hot patination more controllable, while cold patinas develop slowly and can be harder to predict.

We experimented with a range of common finishes:

Cupric nitrate produced bright teal blues.
Ammonium chloride shifted towards greener verdigris tones.
Brindle mixtures created layered browns, reds, and greens.
Bismuth and titanium nitrates generated fragile white surfaces with very different textural qualities.

Almost all bronzes begin with “livering” using potassium polysulfide, producing deep browns and blacks that emphasise surface detail. I experimented with this on my own work but found the finish too close to traditional bronze aesthetics that I am actively trying to avoid.

What interested me most was how application methods dramatically alter results: speckling, spraying, brushing, drenching, and fuming all produce very different surfaces. Wax also plays a major role, functioning as both sealant and aesthetic modifier. Hot wax creates glossy surfaces that can be heavily buffed, while cold wax applications retain a flatter matte finish.

Philippe pointed out that heavily textured patinas often work best on smoother sculptures, while excessive surface variation can visually obscure already textured forms. This became particularly relevant to my own work, where I am more interested in subtle graphite greys and oxidised blacks than traditional bronze finishes.

One particularly successful experiment involved gradually building cupric nitrate before burning it back, creating a soft graphite-grey oxidation that later deepened into black once waxed. The result still retained the material qualities of bronze without immediately reading as “bronze” in the conventional monumental sense.

This increasingly reinforced my feeling that many of the stereotypes surrounding bronze are not inherent to the material itself, but tied to historically dominant finishing conventions and cultural associations. Bronze is often framed as expensive or elitist, yet many other casting metals cost comparable amounts. The real value lies in labour, process, and technical expertise rather than the material alone.

One of the most surprising things I learned was how rarely artists are directly involved in the patination process. In many cases, finishes become standardised and streamlined through the foundry itself. While understandable commercially, I found this slightly baffling given how significant patination is to the final aesthetic character of the work. It feels like a stage filled with painterly potential and productive accident.

Day 11 — 09/04/26

Chasing / Material Translation

Jeff explained the origin of the term “chasing,” describing how metalworkers historically flattened overlapping bronze seams using lead punches, literally “chasing” the join into a near invisible line.

Later, Philippe showed me how different modelling materials leave distinct traces within the final bronze surface. He pointed out examples cast from plasticine, wet clay, and oil clay, each retaining surprisingly specific material qualities.

I was particularly struck by how oily and dense plasticine appeared once translated into bronze. Early in the placement, I was repeatedly told that “what you put in is what you get out,” usually in relation to managing newer clients’ expectations that bronze will not somehow correct or improve the original sculpture. Seeing this firsthand added a new level of appreciation to what they meant. Wet clay retained a damp, almost fleshy quality in the bronze, while the plasticine sculpture looked strikingly oily, almost like Blu Tack. Although both casts were technically the same material, subtle differences in surface finish still carried traces of the original modelling material through the process.

It reinforced how much of the initial material survives translation into bronze. At the same time, I do think bronze introduces its own subtle layer onto the form — whether through its perceived permanence, rigidity, or historical associations, I’m still unsure — but the relationship between original material and cast object feels far less neutral than I had previously assumed.

Day 12 — 16/04/26

Wrapping Up

Today was my final day. My final work was out of the acid and ready to wire-wheel and patina. I spent the morning working on the rest of the peacock sculpture, cutting off sprues and wire-wheeling the oxide left from the acid bath.

Workers from the wax room and several other departments gathered around some large-scale wax works for a client. During the 11am coffee break, we stood around a newly completed monolithic bust of a horse by Charlie Langton. The scale and detail were impressive in person. We talked about how, after working at the foundry, you begin to look at bronze differently — appreciating the assembly, reading the final works as tessellated pieces, and recognising the craftsmanship involved. I found this particularly poignant after seeing fragments of the process unfold across previous weeks.

Around midday, I began patinating my works, particularly interested in understanding bismuth and titanium patinas. They produced interesting results but did not fit the aesthetic direction I was looking for in the works. Ultimately, I reverted back to my favourite: an ebonised copper nitrate finish producing a dark copper oxide surface.

After I had finished my work for the day, I felt wistful — sad that it was coming to an end. I had become genuinely invested in both the people and the processes within the foundry. I cleaned up and started chatting with the chasers while the day wound down. I was asked what I did for a living outside of my university studies, and explained that, alongside my master’s, I work as a freelance carpenter and all-round technical worker.

While saying my goodbyes, conversations shifted naturally toward future plans and work beyond the placement. Both at the chasing site and the main building, I was informally offered the possibility of work with the foundry following the completion of my master’s degree. It felt like recognition that both my practical abilities and my integration within the team had been valued, and that there may be a future within that community.