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Lost-wax casting – also called investment casting, precision casting, or cire perdue (French: [siʁ pɛʁdy]; borrowed from French) [1] – is the process by which a duplicate sculpture (often a metal, such as silver, gold, brass, or bronze) is cast from an original sculpture. Intricate works can be achieved by this method.
Solid casting does not use a clay core but instead a solid piece of wax to create the mould; hollow casting is the more traditional method and uses the clay core. [1] The first task in the lost wax hollow casting process consists of developing a clay core which is roughly the shape of the final cast image.
The fragile wax patterns must withstand forces encountered during the mould making. Much of the wax used in investment casting can be reclaimed and reused. [2] Lost-foam casting is a modern form of investment casting that eliminates certain steps in the process.
The lost wax process originated in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest known record of lost-wax casting is a clay tablet written in cuneiform in the ancient city of Sparta, Babylon, which specifically records how much wax is needed to cast a key. [6] The earliest-known castings in the global archaeological record were made in open stone molds. [7]
The lost-wax casting technique Robinson developed is a modified version of the bronze casting technique. It involves creating a plaster mould which is filled with molten wax. The mould is then removed (and can be reused) and the wax is encased in a heat-resistant covering and placed in the kiln.
Their tradition holds that he taught the Benin metal workers the art of casting bronze using lost-wax techniques during the thirteenth century. [103] These Benin artisans refined that technique until they were able to cast plaques only an eighth-of-an-inch (3 mm) thick, surpassing the art as practiced by Renaissance masters in Europe. [92] [104]
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The ancient Chinese knew both lost-wax casting and section mould casting, and during the Shang dynasty created large numbers of Chinese ritual bronzes, ritual vessels covered with complex decoration, which were buried in sets of up to 200 pieces in the tombs of royalty and the nobility. Over the long creative period of Egyptian dynastic art ...