Unique Leadworking Expertise to Tackle the most Complex of Jobs
Brian Turner employs all three traditional leadworking methods in the creation of his extraordinary pieces, namely, ‘cire perdue’ or Lost Wax, Sand Casting and the Lead Hand Skills: Dressing, Bossing, Lead Burning and Soldering.
Lost Wax
‘Lost Wax’, to give it its English name, is a lead casting process used for both hollow and solid forms. A model is first sculpted in wax, then encased in a protective plaster coating. When heated, the wax melts and runs out, ready to be be replaced with molten lead.
Once filled and cooled the mould is broken open, the plaster core removed, and the metal casting hand-finished by careful filing.
Sand Casting
This method – the most commonly used for large forms – creates castings by adding molten lead to moulds of fine sand. The casting sand is first dampened with water and then pressed around a wooden pattern. Once removed, the pattern leaves behind a negative impression. The resulting mould is carefully filled with molten lead, and allowed to solidify.
Lead Hand Skills
Lead Hand Skills are the manual arts of manipulating lead from one form into another using boxwood hand tools. Brian often uses these tools and techniques whilst making-up corners from lead sheet and particularly for bossing corners of a bowl.
The largest bowl Turners has (so far) been commissioned to produce measured 1500mm diameter and weighed 900 kilos.
