When it comes to limited edition sculptures and art pieces, there’s no other medium quite like bronze. This heavy and dense metal is the perfect candidate for creating a small amount of highly valuable and collectible artworks. Bronze casting is an ancient process that dates back to around 2500 B.C., when it was first discovered by the Babylonians. Since then, artists have been experimenting with new ways to create bronze ornaments and sculptures, often casting them in editions limited to maintain their value and keep them from hitting mass markets. Here’s a brief history of this process:
The History of Bronze Casting: From Ancient Times to Today
Bronze casting has been around for thousands of years. It was first discovered by the Babylonians around 2500 B.C., when they found that copper could be combined with tin to form a durable, more useful metal. This discovery spurred on the creation of bronze tools and eventually, very early forms of bronze sculptures. Over time, various civilizations adopted the practice of bronze casting and developed new methods of creating bronze art pieces. The oldest sculptures in bronze are probably those found at the archaeological site in the Indus Valley. Chinese artists were particularly fond of the practice and created many fine examples of bronze art over the centuries. In Europe the Greeks where very fine bronze sculptors and the collection of Roman sculptures finely preserved until now is impressive.
Some of the peculiarities of bronze that allowed the preservation of sculptures and tools during the centuries are its resistance to corrosion and its relatively high melting temperature thanks to which many sculptures have survived fires.
How Does the Lost Wax Process of Bronze Casting Work?
The process of creating a bronze sculpture begins with the creation of a model out of clay, plaster, gypsum or any other material the artist is confident to work on. The artist shapes their design and then, often relying on a foundry, creates a negative mould of the sculpture generally in gypsum and, in modern times, silicon or latex. This mould is conceived in a way that it can be opened in order to remove the initial model and fill the inside with molten wax that will take the exact shape of the initial model while it cools. This wax copy is then removed from the mould and covered in clay to form a shell all around it. To harden the clay the block is heated in an oven, melting away the wax (thus the “lost wax” process) and obtaining a block of terracotta with inside an empty cavity with the exact shape of the initial model. By pouring liquid bronze inside this block, letting it cool and destroying the clay you finally have a bronze copy of the artwork.
This in short and with a huge approximation is the lost wax process to cast bronze sculptures. There are of course other activities needed, starting from the addition of channels for the flow of bronze, their removal later, ceaseling of the bronze sculpture to remove imperfections, the polishing of the surfaces to the desired aspect, the patination or painting of the finished sculpture. In modern times new technologies like welding, specific alloys, clays, resins and chemicals allow for more complex or customised works, but the main process and its principles remain unchanged since the bronze age.
One of the interesting characteristics of this process is that the first negative mould is not lost or destructed during the work and can thus be reused to produce a new wax and restart the casting to create an edition of basically identical sculptures.
The Value of Limited Editions and Their Market
As we saw bronze casting is the perfect medium for creating artworks in edition. This process is however very expensive, man-work intensive and time-consuming, making it impractical for creating excessively large editions. On the other side, the art market has learned that one of the key components of the value of a work of art is its scarcity. The trade off for artists is always between increasing the number of collectors that can have a piece of their art and limiting the size of the edition to preserve their value. Often it becomes a philosophical choice of trade off between democratizing the act of art collecting and keeping it for the elites
Like for bronze casting, also the various forms of printing since their invention have always been used for editions. The cost of producing an edition of prints however is generally more connected to the production of the initial matrix. Regardless of the tool used, be it a stone for lithographs, an etching, a woodcut or a linocut, the cost of producing an additional print is irrelevant compared to that of the matrix. As a consequence while for sculptures it is not uncommon to have editions limited to very few exemplars, prints are generally large editions (even in the thousands) and their market value is lower.
There are obviously many exceptions to this rule, the famous Andy Warhol´s silkscreens are heavily handmade, in low editions and often each print is considered as single artwork. On the other extreme some bronze sculptures are factory made in unlimited editions even if this means that their market value is not far from their production cost.
The art market standards consider a bronze sculpture basically as valuable as a unique piece when cast in an edition of 12 of less sculptures and it is officially called an “original”. Just as an example the “L’Homme au doigt” by Alberto Giacometti that sold in auction in 2015 for more than 141 million USD was edited in 6 casts plus an artist proof. An edition of more than 12 is called “multiple” and there is no maximum defined by standard, on average I would say the editions are under 500 casts. A limited edition bronze often comes with an inscription with its unique number and the edition size. This mark is usually inscribed on the bronze’s plinth or base or, sometimes, on the body of the sculpture and helps collectors identify the edition’s rarity.
Our Dali Limited Edition Sculptures
The limited edition Salvador Dalí sculptures of our collection are cast at the Perseo Art Foundry, one of the oldest and most prestigious bronze foundries still operating in Switzerland. They are based on maquettes originally made by Salvador Dalí who approved through his secretaries the first exemplars of the edition. Each of the sculptures is uniquely identified by its edition number, has the foundry mark on its base and is accompanied by a letter in which the Perseo Art Foundry confirms its casting.
The artisans working at Perseo have a very long working experience and together with our staff are extremely focused on the quality of their productions, selecting the best alloy for the casting and welding, investing all the time and dedication needed to minimize the possibilities of imperfections in the sculptures and constantly improving their tools, technologies and procedures. Their sculptures, not only the Salvador Dalí editions, are exhibited and sold everywhere in the world. The best ambassadors for the foundry are the great and loyal artists that ever since rely on these artisans to realize their creations.