John's excellent adventure: Shidoni Foundry and Glass Works

On Saturday, we visited the Shidoni Foundry and Glass Works and what an education we got!

The foundry pours bronze sculptures using the lost wax method of bronze art casting. It turns out that the artist is largely dependent on the foundry for the quality of the finished product. Once the artist turns over the original art to have it cast, the foundry goes through about 10 steps to finish the piece, including welding sections together on larger pieces and doing all the finish work. The entire process is described here: http://shidonifoundry.com/processenlarge.html

We were there for a pouring and boy was it hot! Here, the foundry workers pour molten bronze into a vessel used to fill the molds (i.e., ceramic shells).

Here they are filling the ceramic shells.

Here they are dumping the excess bronze into ingots which will be melted and reused for another pour.

We also visited the glass works and watched an artist create a glass vase. It is also very hot and requires the piece to be constantly moving / spinning. The artist would heat the glass, spin it, shape it, swing it to elongate it, and blow it to make it larger. This part of the process took about 45 minutes.

Here the glass is heated in the furnace.