If you had a whimsical bronze sculpture that you wanted translated
into jewelry, where would one start?
If you had a whimsical bronze sculpture that you wanted translated into jewelry, where would one start?
Find someone with a 3-D scanner. You can then scan the sculpture
into an appropriate program and then scale it down to the size that
you want. From there the file can be used to produce a model suitable
for casting. 3-D scanners, however, are not that common or easy to
find. The one that I have seen is used in a university architectural
department.
Joel Schwalb
@Joel_Schwalb
If you had a whimsical bronze sculpture that you wanted translated into jewelry, where would one start?
shape, scale, movement, texture, possible relationship to wearer -
play with these and have fun then decide to make and have fun
:-)…
Christine in Sth Aust
first thing i’d do is contact the sculptor, to inquire as to whether
he/she would be interested in remaking the piece as jewelry. and if
not, i’d ask permission to copy the design on a jewelry scale.
if granted permission, you could find a qualified jeweler to
replicate it for you. if you get that far, look for a jeweler who has
created pieces using similar techniques, ie: fabrication,
carved/cast, ect., and in similar styles, ie: flowing, organic shapes
vs. contemporary constructions.
matthew
www.matthewdesigns.com
Find someone with an appropriate sized 3D scanner. The scanned file
can be used to mill or “grow” a cast-able model, or to perhaps
directly mill out a duplicate scaled to whatever size you desire.
Lots of sculptors who work large do this to have table-top or
smaller pieces available for sale.
Wayne Emery
The Gemcutter
If the sculpture is small enough, you could use a product called
"reduzit". I think the spelling is correct. It is a casting material
that uniformly shrinks as the water dries out of it. You can make a
mold of the sculpture, pour in reduzit, let it set up, remove the
piece from the mold and it dry and shrink. If needed, another mold
can be made, filled with reduzit, that piece shrunk, etc. A friend
did his hand and got it small enough for an earring, and the finger
prints could still be seen (with a magnifier of course!!). One thing
that can happen with this method, is that some parts may “get too
big or small” to look right, then the wax must be reworked.
Another way is to have it remodeled, using the original to work
from. Lastly, but most likely not the way to go, is to take the
master to a company specializing in reducing or, more often,
enlarging sculpture via computers and multi axis cutting heads that
can be programmed to make a bigger or smaller copy, but jewelry size
is really out of the realm size wise because of the size of the
cutting heads.
Hope this helps.
John Dach
I do this exact thing for Gloria Tew. Go to her web site to see the
life size sculptures. She provides me with a table size object, I
laser scan it with a Roland LPX-250 and create a solid model to mold
and cast. Pendants and earrings mostly.
The editing of the scanned raw data is the hardest part. Filling
holes and deleting spikes of the scan with the present software is a
pain in the butt.
I mill a solid model with a small CNC mill and make a silicone mold
for production.
Regards,
Todd Hawkinson