© Nigel Watt
Casting replicas of Iron Age sculptures doesn’t sound like an easy task, particularly when you have to wear a hefty protective suit while pouring molten bronze and iron into miniscule pots from the fires of a burning furnace.
Inspired by the amazing Oxford University collections held at the good ship Pitt Rivers, 15 artists were given the chance to try their flame retardant arms at just that courtesy of the Bullpen Foundry, a family-run Oxfordshire farmland building which offers practitioners and the public facilities for wax moulding, pouring and metalwork, making it pretty much one of a kind in the UK.
Overseen by Bullpen founders Helen and Wesley Jacobs and fellow artists Steve Hurst and Daniel Hunt, the research session-turned masked sculpting swizzle has resulted in each heat-harnesser forging a new sculpture for the museum.
They go on display there alongside unfinished fragments taken straight from the moulds, fledgling versions of each piece and a series of photographs charting how each stage of the project progressed.
- Open 10am-4.30pm (12pm-4.30pm Monday). Admission free. Visit The Bullpen for more on the site.
More pictures from the furnace:
A week-long course in mould-making techniques at the Bullpen Foundry accompanied the exhibition© Nigel Watt
The lead artists visited the Pitt Rivers to study selected objects from the collection© Nigel Watt
The project was a lesson in skill development and inspiration for 15 participating artists© Nigel Watt
The results of the process have gone on show in the Lower and Upper Galleries© Nigel Watt
