035_BronzePolyChair15035_BronzePolyChair14035_BronzePolyChair13Bronze Poly Chair035_BronzePolyChair10035_BronzePolyChair09035_BronzePolyChair08035_BronzePolyChair07035_BronzePolyChair06035_BronzePolyChair05035_BronzePolyChair04035_BronzePolyChair03035_BronzePolyChair02035_BronzePolyChair0035_BronzePolyChair_01 035 – Bronze Poly Chair

Bronze Poly Chair
2006
Silicon bronze
320 x 410 x 720
Produced for Johnson Trading Gallery

The Bronze Poly Stool (034.) with the addition of a fourth leg and a backrest, becomes the Bronze Poly Chair.

Bronze Poly Stool was my first attempt at casting a piece of furniture using the lost-foam casting process in a single cast. I carved the stool from a block of low density expanded polystyrene by hand, gently whittling away the polystyrene beads until the delicate form of a three-legged stool remained. Having previously produced furniture in both carved expanded polystyrene and sand-cast metal, I decided to combine the two processes to produce a new piece of work in an attempt to capture the beautiful, complex texture of carved polystyrene. I achieved this
by adopting and slightly altering the industrial lost foam casting process typically used in the mass production of aluminium engine blocks. The fact the polystyrene pattern is sacrificed during the casting process was very appealing, and so I decided to explore the material’s perceived ephemerality by using a labour intensive and unrepeatable process to make a series of stools and chairs with highly unique details and characteristics, otherwise impossible to achieve using conventional casting. The high fluid rate of molten bronze allows a perfectly exact replica of the polystyrene ‘master’ to be cast. Because the master is sacrificed during the casting process, each subsequent bronze stool or chair I make requires me first to carve the form from a block of polystyrene, thus each bronze cast is unique.