Busacca Gallery

A wonderful an interesting Lifesize Bronze Antique hand. It looks like it was used At one time As a Paperweight. Or some kind of wonderful Display art peace. It's very old. Looks to have been Made around 18th-century Early 19th century. It has its own custom-made metal stand. There is a huge amount of work in casting bronze. That's why it's so expensive. The archeological period in which bronze was the hardest metal in widespread use is known as the Bronze Age. The beginning of the Bronze Age in India and western Eurasia is conventionally dated to the mid-4th millennium BC, and to the early 2nd millennium BC in China; elsewhere it gradually spread across regions. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age starting from about 1300 BC and reaching most of Eurasia by about 500 BC, although bronze continued to be much more widely used than it is in modern times. The discovery of bronze enabled people to create metal objects which were harder and more durable than previously possible. Bronze tools, weapons, armor, and building materials such as decorative tiles were harder and more durable than their stone and copper ("Chalcolithic") predecessors. Initially, bronze was made out of copper and arsenic, forming arsenic bronze, or from naturally or artificially mixed ores of copper and arsenic, with the earliest artifacts so far known coming from the Iranian plateau in the 5th millennium BC. It was only later that tin was used, becoming the major non-copper ingredient of bronze in the late 3rd millennium BC. I describe some of the Step-by-step processes below. Model-making. An artist or mould-maker creates an original model from wax, clay, or another material. Wax and oil-based clay are often preferred because these materials retain their softness. Mouldmaking. A mould is made of the original model or sculpture. The rigid outer moulds contain the softer inner mould, which is the exact negative of the original model. Most moulds are made of at least two pieces, and a shim with keys is placed between the parts during construction so that the mould can be put back together accurately. If there are long, thin pieces extending out of the model, they are often cut off of the original and moulded separately. Sometimes many moulds are needed to recreate the original model, especially for large models. Wax. Once the mould is finished, molten wax is poured into it and swished around until an even coating, usually about ​1⁄8 inch (3 mm) thick, covers the inner surface of the mould. This is repeated until the desired thickness is reached. Another method is to fill the entire mould with molten wax and let it cool until a desired thickness has set on the surface of the mould. After this the rest of the wax is poured out again, the mould is turned upside down and the wax layer is left to cool and harden. With this method it is more difficult to control the overall thickness of the wax layer. The model-maker may reuse the mould to make multiple copies, limited only by the durability of the mould. The steps used in casting small bronze sculptures are fairly standardized, though the process today varies from foundry to foundry. (In modern industrial use, the process is called investment casting.) Variations of the process include: "lost mould", which recognizes that materials other than wax can be used (such as: tallow, resin, tar, and textile); and "waste wax process" (or "waste mould casting"), because the mould is destroyed to remove the cast item.

Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (such as aluminium, manganese, nickel or zinc) and sometimes non-metals or metalloids such as arsenic, phosphorus or silicon. These additions produce a range of alloys that may be harder than copper alone, or have other useful properties, such as stiffness, ductility, or machinability. Lost-wax casting (also called "investment casting", "precision casting", or cire perdue which has been adopted into English from the French) is the process by which a duplicate metal sculpture (often silver, gold, brass or bronze) is cast from an original sculpture. Intricate works can be achieved by this method. The oldest known example of this technique is a 6,000-year old amulet from Indus valley civilization. Other examples from a similar period are the objects discovered in the Cave of the Treasure (Nahal Mishmar) hoard in southern Israel, and which belong to the Chalcolithic period (4500–3500 BC). Conservative estimates of age from carbon-14 dating date the items to c. 3700 BC, making them more than 5,700 years old.[3][4]. Lost-wax casting was widespread in Europe until the 18th century, when a piece-moulding process came to predominate.

Link: https://www.busaccagallery.com/index.php#

The history of casting Bronze / A Roman writer of the 1st century AD, mentions the processing of wax from beehives in De Re Rustica, perhaps for casting, as does Pliny the Elder, who details a sophisticated procedure for making Punic wax. One Greek inscription refers to the payment of craftsmen for their work on the Erechtheum in Athens (408/7–407/6 BC). Clay–modellers may use clay moulds to make terracotta negatives for casting or to produce wax positives. Pliny portrays Zenodorus [fr] as a well–reputed ancient artist producing bronze statues,[39] and describes[37] Lysistratos of Sikyon, who takes plaster casts from living faces to create wax casts using the indirect process.

Many bronze statues or parts of statues in antiquity were cast using the lost wax process. Theodorus of Samos is commonly associated with bronze casting. Pliny also mentions the use of lead, which is known to help molten bronze flow into all areas and parts of complex moulds. Quintilian documents the casting of statues in parts, whose moulds may have been produced by the lost wax process. Scenes on the early–5th century BC Berlin Foundry Cup depict the creation of bronze statuary working, probably by the indirect method of lost–wax casting.


The lost–wax method is well documented in ancient Indian literary sources. The Shilpa shastras, a text from the Gupta Period (c. 320–550 AD), contains detailed information about casting images in metal. The 5th–century AD Vishnusamhita, an appendix to the Vishnu Purana, refers directly to the modeling of wax for making metal objects in chapter XIV: "if an image is to be made of metal, it must first be made of wax."[14] Chapter 68 of the ancient Sanskrit text Mānasāra Silpa details casting idols in wax and is entitled "Maduchchhista vidhānam", or the "lost wax method". The Mānasollāsa (also known as the Abhilasitārtha chintāmani), allegedly written by King Bhūlokamalla Someshvara of the Chalukya dynasty of Kalyāni in AD 1124–1125, also provides detail about lost–wax and other casting processes.

In a 16th–century treatise, the Uttarabhaga of the Śilparatna written by Srïkumāra, verses 32 to 52 of Chapter 2 ("Linga lakshanam"), give detailed instructions on making a hollow casting.


An early medieval writer Theophilus Presbyter, believed to be the Benedictine monk and metalworker Roger of Helmarshausen, wrote a treatise in the early–to–mid–12th century that includes original work and copied information from other sources, such as the Mappae clavicula and Eraclius, De dolorous et artibus Romanorum. It provides step–by–step procedures for making various articles, some by lost–wax casting: "The Copper Wind Chest and Its Conductor" (Chapter 84); "Tin Cruets" (Chapter 88), and "Casting Bells" (Chapter 85), which call for using "tallow" instead of wax; and "The Cast Censer". In Chapters 86 and 87 Theophilus details how to divide the wax into differing ratios before moulding and casting to achieve accurately tuned small musical bells. The 16th–century Florentine sculptor Benvenuto Cellini may have used Theophilus' writings when he cast his bronze Perseus with the Head of Medusa.