Member Event: Luted Crucible Bronze Casting

Member Events

'Luted' or sealed crucible casting is low a cost, and low-tech method of casting, relatively unknown outside India and West Africa. It involves sealing the raw ingredients for bronze - copper and tin - into one half of a peanut-shaped crucible made from mud. The other half contains the wax model to be cast. The clay peanut is baked, and when the metal is molten it is flipped over, and the molten bronze fills the cavity left by the wax.

Artist Piers Watson has been teaching this method all over the world, and has come to lead us in a week-long exploration of how bronze making was done since the early days of its history.

During the week, we will explore the fundamentals of the technique by creating small solid bronze objects using our portable propane fired furnace. Members are involved in every step of the process and will need to attend the full week’s course:

• Making the beeswax object to be cast
• Attaching wax sprues (to form channels which the metal travels down) to the object and adding the first clay layer
• Forming the clay cup mould around the object, and making a sepaparate clay cup (the crucible) to enclose the bronze
• Weighing and preparing the ‘recipe’ of metals that make up the bronze alloy, and filling the second clay cup
• The two clay cups are then joined together at the necks to form a peanut shape, dried and baked in the furnace, bronze end down.
• The luted crucibles are ‘cast’by turning them upside down, the bronze runs into the cavity left my the now-melted wax
• When cool, they are cracked open and the bronze piece is finished with tools.
• The technique is very open and experimental, each small object, each experience, will be unique. It is interesting not to think of creating individual works of art, but to enjoy the looseness of the process, like being able to sketch with bronze, to explore and develop ideas.

To apply for a place, please download the application form below. This workshop is open to all members of the Institute of Making. Deadline for applications 1st July