The Making of Sculptures with Marshall M. Fredericks
Making The Poet-Lord Byron
One of Marshall's last pieces that he created was "The Poet-Lord Byron". To help show the process of how Marshall made his sculptures, the video "The Making of Lord Byron" was created.
To start off, we see Marshall sculpting Lord Byron with oil-based clay. Lord Byron was a prominent poet in the 19th century and one of Marshall's favorite authors.
Plaster would be placed all over the clay to create plaster piece molds of the sculpture. This is not the mold used for casting the bronze, but rather used to create a plaster model that will be used for making sand molds.
Once the plaster piece molds were made, then the plaster model would be made using them. Why do you think Marshall used plaster? Do you think there are other materials that he could have used?
The foundry would take the plaster model and create French or grain sand molds that would be used to cast the bronze. Have you ever seen sand casting before? If so, where have you seen it done?
The molten bronze is then poured into the sand molds. Why do you think Marshall used bronze? What other metals could he have used?
Once the bronze was cooled, then the mold pieces were removed. The bronze pieces were cleaned, assembled and welded together. Additional cold working blends the weld marks to match surface texture.
Finally, Lord Byron gets his green color from patination. What is patination? Why do you think Marshall chose to do this process to his sculptures?