Girebronze foundry: nothing is cast in stone

Wow, it's quite a walk around the vast blog world and I've only got slippers on. Odd questions pop up in my mind while I'm trying to write my first instalment. Things like ‘how do I get back to the start?’ and ‘Am I in a pickle?’.

Why am I blogging? Because I need to get the word out about my work, and that means exploring as many alleyways and avenues as Tony Christie.

I thought I’d start by telling you a little bit about art foundries – or more specifically, one foundry, Girebronze in Massy Palaiseau, Paris. It’s one of many I’ve worked with over the years in France and in Britain.

Most artists don’t work at a foundry or have studios within the premises. Instead, they make models of what they want casting, deliver them to the foundry and then pop back when it’s finished. Being completely oblivious of this usual procedure, when I started getting my work cast at Girebronze I just stood in the middle of the foundry and immersed myself in the process.

I worked at the foundry alongside a bronze furniture maker and a bronze sculpture, both of whom did have studios inside. That’s how I managed to get my feet in its doors and how, after a few years, I was offered a studio of my own.

The place was more of an industrial foundry than an art foundry, so the chaps that worked on the foundry floor would look at some of the stuff we were asking them to cast, then look at each other with that blank, thousand-yard stare I’ve read is common among traumatised Vietnam War vets. I loved the way it smelled in the morning…  like hot grinded metal. But it wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, plus it was bad for the lungs. So bad that in France metal foundry workers had to undertake a lung test every year.

One of the great things about Girebronze is that when it came to bronze and metal casting it was cheap – something I only discovered after I left and started working with other foundries, which also had far stricter health and safety protocols (they were a bit bemused if I asked if I could finish of the casts myself in the foundry – most wouldn’t let you get past the offices).

Sadly, Girebronze closed its big industrial doors back in 2007.

Here are a few pictures of it in its last few weeks.

When the owner decided to pull the plug, the land was sold to developers and all of the bronze was flogged to the Saudis for... a lot. Girebronze, like lots of foundries across Europe simply disappeared into the ether, only to be replaced by a huge business complex.

There was a bit of a sting in the tail for the new owners because it turned out the ground the foundry sat on was drenched in oil, making it "problematic". It seems that right up until the 1990s, oil was used for the furnaces and once the oil was spent it was simply buried beneath the foundry. I’ll find out what actually happened and tell you more (apparently some people got seriously hand-slapped for it).

The beautiful lathe pictured below was sold, I think, for about 100 euros. Just for scrap metal. It was used during the war by the Germans – they had their fingers in the foundry's bronze for about five years, starting around 1940 when they rolled into town for a visit.

Girebronze was a sand-casting foundry, so the process involved pouring a mix of resins and black and white sand into flasks (those iron metal container-looking things). Inside would be a negative of your cast. Everything was very heavy, so you needed to move everything around with a small crane. You can see that chap moving his chasse (as they were called in France) towards the underside of his other flask (it's behind him). These were then sealed, and the molten bronze was poured into it.

This is how the bronze was kept: massive bronze tubes that were cut and melted down.

To be continued...