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Year – 2009
Material – Cast bronze with mirror polish and black patina finish.
Dims – 500mm H x 450mm W.
Edition – Limited edition of 9.
Following the success of the first bronze I made called Eclipse, I wanted to use the same concept to explore and create some more table-top sized bronzes.
Where Eclipse’s form was based on Fibonacci and the form of a Nautilus shell, Talisman is slightly simpler and I came up with the idea for the shape when rolling a series of steel rings for a blacksmith I was working with at the time. I noticed that if two half rings were positioned opposing one another in a symmetrical but off-set way, the void between could possibly make a very interesting form.
So the original ‘pattern’ was created using a metal frame or jig with two sides of half rings. A series of holes were drilled in the jig, so string could be stretched and tied from one side to another. Liquid wax was then painted onto one side of the string and gradually built up layer over layer, until a solid surface was achieved. After a considerable amount of work smoothing out the wax, a form was achieved that could then be invested into a ceramic shell and made into bronze using the lost wax process.
Talisman is finished with one surface being perfectly smooth and mirror polished or patinated, whilst the other has a dark patina and is textured with a series of raised lines that hint at how the sculpture was made.