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First, Jordi Bonet sculpts the positive in a block or slab of Styrofoam using knives, scissors, punches, etc. and burns shapes with a curling iron, iron or blowtorch. The actual creation period is therefore over and the work continues, for the following stages, at the industrial foundry where the specialists in the trade bury the Styrofoam shape in a syrupy paste, based on very fine sand, taking care to fill all cavities well. Now all that remains is to drill small holes through this paste before chemically hardening it. This negative of the sculpted form constitutes the mould. Then melt the wax in an oven since it does not disappear completely like Styrofoam in contact with molten metal. We thus “lose” the wax through one of the small openings provided in the mold, hence the name of the technique: lost styrofoam or lost wax. It is an ancient process commonly used in goldsmithing for its exemplary fidelity in reproducing shapes, even the fingerprints left on the wax are reproduced by the mold.

After unmolding, the sculpture returns to Jordi Bonet's workshop where three or four young apprentices, under the direction of the artist, polish the metal in order to give it a sensitivity other than that left by the mold. “In principle,” Jordi Bonet tells us, “whatever can be done by someone else, I leave to my helpers.”

- extract taken from Decormag, October 1974, page 85.

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