Bronze
I believe that even people who have had very limited exposure to the world of decorative metalwork know of, and give just respect to, the long heritage of Bronze.

Bronze possesses a mystique due to its stature in history and its legacy as a decorative metal. As a casting material, it is magical, from the casting process itself, to the amazing pallette of colors and textures that are possible during the finishing process. Bronze began as an alloy of basically Copper and Tin and was used that way for hundreds of years. Today, there are hundreds of alloys available, each with special characteristics, from industrial applications to the metals used for casting and fabrication in the art world.

The application for bronze most prevalent at Forms in Metal is lost wax casting. Another common casting method is sand casting, an industrial technique used for many years for everything from bronze plaques to water valves. In fact, with the lost wax and sand casting process, not much has changed except the methods by which the metal is melted, with today's availability of natural gas and other fossil fuels. The one revolutionary change in sand casting is the introduction of a photo-sensitive emulsified plastic that can translate a black and white image into a 3- dimensional pattern. In the olden days this pattern-making part of the sand casting process was all hand crafted and very tedious.

The art of pattern making is not lost, as there are still many applications for patterns that must still be handcrafted for casting in metals as well as other materials. One thing we enjoy here is to combine these 2 casting methods. A large plaque, for example, can be made using the sand casting method. Detailed components made using lost wax casting can then be added. Result - beauty and efficiency. We show examples of this here.