Bronze Casting

A Benin bronze bangle — the same lost-wax casting used for our largest sculptures, scaled down to something you can wear

We've written before about the story behind our Benin Bronzes — who casts them and what the symbols mean. This time we wanted to slow down on the casting itself: the actual steps that turn a lump of wax into a finished piece of metal, and why that process is the reason no two bronzes we sell are ever identical.

The lost-wax method, step by step

Lost-wax casting starts with a model sculpted entirely in wax — every detail that will appear in the final bronze, from a leopard's spots to the fine lines on a face, is carved into the wax first. That model is then packed in clay and left to dry hard around it. The clay mould is heated until the wax inside turns liquid and runs out through a channel left for exactly that purpose — this is the "lost" part of lost-wax, since the original wax model is destroyed in the process and can never be reused. What's left behind is a hollow clay shell, empty in the precise shape of the piece.

Molten bronze is poured into that cavity next, filling every groove the wax left behind. Once it's cooled and set, the clay mould is broken away — not lifted off or unscrewed, but physically cracked open — to free the casting inside. The bronze is then cleaned up and finished by hand.

That's why a mould is never reused. Once it's broken to release the casting, it's gone — so a new wax model has to be sculpted from scratch for the next piece. Our large Ife-style head (8.1) is a good example: a single wax original, its own mould, its own pour — there's no second copy of this exact head anywhere.

The same process, very different scales

What's interesting about lost-wax casting is how the exact same technique stretches across completely different kinds of objects. Our large leopard sculptures and standing figures — like Statue 79.12, a single standing figure cast at roughly tabletop scale — go through the same wax-model-to-clay-mould-to-molten-metal sequence as a small wearable bangle. The scale changes the working time and the skill needed to keep detail crisp at a smaller size, but the underlying method doesn't change at all. It's the same craft whether the result ends up on a wrist or a mantel.

A small bronze styled on a console, alongside plants and pottery — the same piece you'd never get a second of, cast once and never repeated

Every casting starts with wax that's melted away and a mould that's broken open — which is exactly why no two pieces are ever quite the same.

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