Casting

CASTING

Casting: The substitution process of casting has been in use for more than five thousand years. It’s a manufacturing process by which a liquid material is usually poured into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then allowed to solidify. One traditional method of bronze casting frequently used today is the lost wax process. Casting materials are usually metals (like bronze, steel, iron and aluminum) but can be various cold-setting materials that cure after mixing two or more components together; examples are epoxy, concrete, plaster, clay, wax, soap, chocolate and plastic, among other things. Casting is most often used for making complex shapes that would be otherwise difficult or uneconomical to make by other methods. It’s a labor-intensive process that allows for the creation of multiples from an original object (similar to the medium of printmaking), each of which is extremely durable and exactly like its predecessor. A mold is usually destroyed after the desired number of castings has been made. 

Below is a photograph of the La Porte de l’Enfer(The Gates of Hell) by Auguste Rodin, as situated at the Kunsthaus in Zürich (Switzerland). Rodin received the commission for this project in 1880 for the Paris Museum of Decorative Arts, which was never built. Nevertheless, Rodin continued his work on this project on and off, until his death in 1917. Rodin’s The Gates of Helldepict various scenes from Dante’s great literary work, Inferno.

This is an extremely large bronze cast, high relief sculpture depicting various scenes from Dante's great literary masterpiece, Inferno. This bronze work of art was created by Auguste Rodin, beginning in 1880 and cast after his death.

Attributions: Image: by Roland zh Aug, 2011, CC BY-SA 3.0. 

Attribution of Text: Methods. Authored by: Christopher Gildow. Located at: https://learn.canvas.net/courses/24/pages/m8-methods?module_item_id=44465. Project: Open Course Library. License: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike