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Foundry Cast Aluminium
Aluminium is an abundant, bright, silvery metal that is unusually light and corrosion resistant. It is one of the most commonly used materials for metal sculptures. It may be sand cast, which copies the shape of a sculpture but leaves a granular surface. This can be polished off to varying degrees up to a mirror shine. Aluminium may also be lost wax cast which replicates the original model precisely and again may then be highly polished. It is not uncommon for some areas to be left unpolished to create a contrasting surface finish. These high end artworks are suitable for both indoor or outdoor display.
With aluminium castings the degree of polish from a flat grey to a chrome-like mirror shine represents the colour options. Very simply, as with any surface, the more polished the more expensive the piece due to the time and labour involved.
Aluminium is a relatively recently discovered metal. It’s naturally occurring compound, alum in the form of crystals, has been known since the 5th century BCE. It is first described by the Greek historian Heroditus. It wasn’t understood to be a metal oxide, however, until the early 19th century when British chemist, Humphry Davy, successfully electrolysed alumina with alkaline batteries but was unsuccessful at separating the metal. There is considerable debate about who first isolated the metal. To begin with it was more valuable than gold, so hard it was to produce. Not until industrial processes were invented by the French and Germans in the late 19th century did aluminium usage become widespread.
Soon after the widespread availability of aluminium to the public it caught the attention of artists in both it’s sheet form and for cast metal sculptures. The first major sculptural work in aluminium is considered to be the famous statue of Anteros, Greek god of requited love, on Piccadilly Circus in London, erected in 1893.