Category: metal work

Alfred Gilbert

Albert Gilbert, “Anteros”, Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, Piccadilly Circus, London

The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain is located at the southeastern side of Piccadilly Circus in London. It was erected in 1892-1893 to commemorate the philanthropic works of Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, who achieved the replacing of child-labor with school education.

Albert Gilbert’s statue of Anteros was the first sculpture in the world to be cast in aluminum, which was just becoming in wide public use in the early 1890s. The statue is set on a bronze fountain, which inspired the marine motifs that Gilbert used on the statue. The model for the sculpture was Albert Gilbert’s studio assistant, a 16 year-old Anglo-Italian, Angelo Colarossi who was born in Shepherd’s Bush. Italian-born piece-moulder and figure maker fernando Meacci was involved in the moulding of the fountain which was most likely cast by George Broad & Son, a major foundry established in the 1870s.

Henry Moore

 

Henry Moore, “Nuclear Energy”, Bronze Sculpture, The University of Chicago

On December 2nd of 1942, a team of scientists led by Italian émigré Enrico Fermi set the world’s first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in motion at Chicago Pile 1, the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor built under the original site of the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field.

This event was a decisive step toward the creation of the age of atomic energy, and critically, at the time, to the production of the atomic bomb for use in World War II. On December 2nd of 1967, the sculpture “Nuclear Energy” was unveiled on the campus of the University of Chicago as a memorial to the accomplishments of Fermi and his fellow physicists.

The twelve-foot tall bronze sculpture was commissioned by the University of Chicago and created by British artist Henry Moore, one of the most preeminent public sculptors of his generation. Moore designed, modeled, and cast the bronze sculpture between 1963 and 1967,  To Moore, it was both a celebration of this incredible human achievement, and also a warning against the dangers of harnessing such natural, physical power.

Winifred Turner

Winifred Turner, “Crouching Youth”, 1943, Cast Bronze and Plaster Model, 103 cm Height. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England

Winifred Turner, the daughter of the stone sculptor Alfred Turner, attended the Royal Academy Schools in London between 1924 and 1929. She was elected Fellow and Associate of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1930, exhibiting at the Royal Academy between 1924 and 1962. Turner taught at the Central School of Art and Design, a London public school for fine and applied arts, in the 1930s and into the early 1940s.

This highly stylised figure of “Crouching Youth” reflects Turner’s interest in ancient sculpture and also her passion for dance. The bronze has a green patina and smooth surface suggesting the sinuous forms of the young male body.