Materials

While all sculpture begins in some impermanent materials like clay or plaster, the material ultimately selected for the finished piece can have an enormous effect on the pieces life and maintenance as well as its impact on a viewer:

Below, some of the common materials used for sculpture today.

Bronze (bränz) 1. n. [from French, ult prob <Persian biring, copper]
1. An alloy of copper and tin 2. adj. a reddish-brown color of or like bronze

Bronze has been the material of choice for fine sculpture since ancient Greece. While Greek marbles are revered, and have survived better over the millenia (because they can't be melted down to make swords or bullets- the fate of much ancient sculpture), the ancient Greeks considered stone sculpture lower class, and more common than the bronze originals that most of these marble statues were copied from. For its workability and durability, easy repairability, and its ability to record the fine detail of the human form, bronze is unmatched as a sculptural medium.

Bronze is a mixture of copper and tin that when melted together, amazingly, becomes much stronger and harder than either metal is capable of on its own. It's relatively easy to pour into a mold and to work. It doesn't rust or crumble like iron or concrete. It's just about impossible to destroy. Re-dicovered Greek bronzes have survived thousands of years at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, virtually undamaged. A bronze statue made today has the potential to last for millenia without maintainence. Bronze is easily finished in virtually any color or texture, although reddish-brown or a grey-green are its most natural colors.

Joshua Diedrich's studio is able to provide a wide range of sculpture in bronze, relatively quickly and inexpensively. It is our preferred medium, and the final material that most of our sculpture is designed for.

 

Since ancient Rome, marble has been revered for its sculptural qualities- its translucence like flesh, its fineness and ability to take a high polish, and for the skill required to work it. In many minds, marble is synonymous with fine sculpture. It was the material of choice of Michelangelo, Bernini, and other great masters of the past. A portrait bust in marble harkens back to the classical era, and as such has been a material of choice for great portraits for thousands of years. Marble is a more tempramental, less durable material than bronze. It lacks bronzes flexibility and its many conpositional options, and thus is more suited to compact sculpture such as busts.

The process of working marble is a difficult and long one, fraught with risks. As such, it entails a much higher cost and working time than other materials. In order to provide the service to those who are drawn to the majesty and ancient quality of marble, we work with European craftsman who have cut stone for generations and are able to produce a marble statue precisely in the image of the clay original produced by Joshua Diedrich. This relationship betwen sculptor and craftsman is the way things have been commonly done for centuries. As such, all requests for marble will require an individual estimate, and may incur additional travel expenses.

Modern Polymers

Cold-Cast Resins are a new breed of materials, usually consisting of a two-part chemical kit that cures into a durable, plastic-like final product. Resins, silicons, lucite and other plastics are unique for their ability to mimic other materials very convincingly, such as bronze, stone, ivory or even living human flesh. They are used extensively in the toy, model and special effects industries, and are often used to produce cheaper, much less durable sculpture that looks and feels very much like bronze. Some prominent figure sculptors have used similar materials to cast clear or translucent figures that look like floating crystal.

We offer them here for their unique mimicking ability, in case a client should want a sculpture that resembles flesh, ivory, amber, or some other material that is impossible to use authentically. With color treatments and additives, cold-cast resins can be made to look like essentially any material, be it solid or liquid, translucent or transparent.