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Identifying fashion trends and creating products to meet the expectations of generation Z consumers, individuals who were born between 1995 and 2010, and grew up in the age of social media, advanced technology and instant access to information.
For my technique, I choose wax for my models because it is versatile and allows me to create objects of any size and colour; it is suitable for sculptures as well as small works in gold. Moreover, its extreme malleability allows me to achieve a unique level of detail. For all of my design creations I used the lost-wax casting process, which is a sculptural technique that originated in the Bronze Age and eventually flourished in Greek and Roman times (Dunne, 2016). This is still indeed a widely used technique for producing jewelry and art.
How does it work?
1) I select the object I want to model and place a photo of it on a wax block. Then I engrave the outline onto the wax with a scalpel.
2) I trim the size of the block using a saw.
3) I carve the trimmed block using scalpels of various sizes to remove thin layers of wax. Small pieces of wax can also be added using a tool with a rigid metal tip that is designed specifically for heating wax. Heating the wax makes it softer and easier to manipulate.
4) I use sandpaper to do more refined work on the details of the model.
5) Here is when I start to make the matal model. First, I make a mould from the wax model to ensure that the same form will be created each time the mould is used.
6) I place the mould in a furnace to secure the shape.
7) I remove the wax model from the mould using a knife.
8) I use the mould to create wax model copies of the original form.
9) After making each new wax piece, I remove it from the mould.
10) I attach the wax models to a wax cylinder known as “tree.” Once the “tree” is finished and all of the wax models are attached, I place it into a metal tube.
11) I then place the tree inside a metal cylinder, and pour liquid plaster inside. Immediately afterwards, I make two holes in the cylinder, one at the bottom and one at the top.
12) I then place the metal tube in a hot oven (200°) so that the melted wax flows out of the hole at the bottom of the cylinder, leaving only the plaster cast inside the cylinder.
13) I melt the metal of choice.
14) When the metal is fully melted, I pour it into the hole at the top of the cylinder.
15) Once the metal has solidified, I remove the cylinder from the plaster cast. Then I direct a high-pressure water stream at the plaster cast in order to break and remove the plaster and obtain a clean metal “tree”.
16) I detach the pieces of the “tree” from the central tube.
17) I clean the metal piece to make it smooth.
18) The final step is enamelling which is obtained by fusing powdered glass to a metal substrate.