Thank you so much for appreciating my little obsession to combine my deep love of nature with a well thought out mixture of design and function.
Since boyhood, I've enjoyed learning the many ways to use tools and materials to bring ideas into fruition. After trying out a few careers, my heart circled me back to the dream of creating my own future through design. In my late 20's I discovered Industrial Design at RISD and knew I'd found the beginning of my path.
After graduating I worked for a couple corporations while making designs for myself on the side, which friends and neighbors frequently asked if I'd make for them as well. Lost Wax Casting has been a commonly used practice in creating complex pieces in the jewelry industry and beyond. And it enabled me to produce multiple copies of my designs, opening the door for me to start my little business.
With credit to perhaps some undiagnosed ocd and a wonderful local foundry, I love creating little works of art that are mesmerizing to look at but with the joy of seamless functionality.
With much gratitude- thank you ~ Matthew S. Hall
Lost Wax Casting is an age-old technique (believed to have been started around 2500BC)- used in small scale and large scale casting production.
It starts with a carved or sculpted piece made from wax, attached to a wax tree which suspends the piece or pieces and acts as a flow gate for the wax to melt out and metal to flow into the mold. The wax model/tree is held in the center of a flask or large enough pipe by a rubber booty closing the bottom and a liquid plaster is poured in/around the wax piece, then put in a vacuum sealed dome on a vibrating plate which removes the bubbles from the plaster before drying it overnight becoming a temporary mold. Next, the rubber booty is removed from the cylinder/temporary mold, then put in an oven to melt the wax out before pouring your desired melted metal into the hole which the wax melted out from. After a few minutes waiting for the metal to solidify, you use tongs to place the whole thing in a bucket of water which makes the plaster explode away from the freshly cast metal.
Finally after cutting your piece free from the tree, you begin refining it into a finished piece.
It is a lengthy/involved process but enables creation of pieces with intricate details and undercuts which conventional molding processes cannot duplicate.