Each manufacture is obtained thanks to the lost wax investment casting technique (realized on casts of Chiurazzi Foundry which used Greek and Roman originals casts preserved at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, Musei Vaticani, Musei Capitolini and Museo Borghese in Rome, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria degli Uffizi and Museo Nazionale in Florence), refined then by the hands of a master chaser.
The chance, unique in the history, to create casts from works of such important museums, gave the chance to the Chiurazzi Foundry to have a gallery of around 1.500 plaster casts of classical sculptures – from Doriforo to Discobolo, from Ercole Farnese to Laocoonte, from various Venuses to imperial statues, from Hellenic busts discovered in Ercolano to every kind of objects coming from Pompeii and so on –, Renaissance and modern (from Michelangelo’s Mosè to Cellini’s Perseo, from Bernini’s masterpieces to Canova’s)…
The creative process of the bronzes is the same Egyptians and Chinese used already 4 thousand years ago: after having obtained a heat-resistant cast of the original manufacture, it is covered with a layer of silicone gum that takes the shape of the original. The wax model is closed in a mould, in which a system of casting canals and air valves is formed. Through heating, the wax melts and leaves space for cart bronze. Once the bronzes get colder, and the mould is broken, they undergo a first sandblast. At this point, the artist starts to work with burins, files and chisels (in total a hundred of different instruments) to refine and put on relief all the smallest particulars. The last step is coating.
The Chiurazzi Foundry had three types of coating: the one so called “Pompei”, dark green; the “Ercolano” one, dark and uniform brown; and the “Moderna” one, lighter brown mixed to green.
This last stage of manufacturing, as all the others, requires a long experience and the knowledge of a very complicated technique, passed on from worker to worker, from generation to generation, among Naples chasers working for and with Gennaro Chiurazzi, his sons and nephews.
