One Feather At A Time - The Raven Sculpture Journal

Continuing the journal of Martin Pierce’s Raven sculpture. 

Following his visit to Big Bear where he was able to see  raven’s up close Martin decided he needed to change the pose of his sculpture to show the raven cawing with his beak open and throat puffed to make the distinctive sound raven’s use when declaring their territory or courting.

Once captured in pencil, the raven’s 3  perspectives  were outlined onto rough wood blocks, one for each section of his body. In deciding  how to sectionalize the raven’s shape Martin had to reverse engineer the sculpture by determining how the bronze would eventually flow, where the  gates for the bronze could best be added and where thereby the bird could best be sectioned.

Constructing and de-constructing a Raven for lost wax casting

If Martin had been intending to make only one wood sculpture he would have chosen a wood with more character than basswood and would have sculpted the bird from one block of wood rather than several pieces. However, as this sculpture will be used to create several molds for lost wax casting the sculpture was made so that it could be de-constructed.

The raven will be cast in bronze and will be available as a limited edition. The raven will join his feathered friend the scrub jay in Martin’s collection of bronze sculptures, which as well as portraying birds also portrays insects in fictional settings.

Martin Pierce has gone to the birds with our new sculpture

We recently teased you a bit with an introduction to a project Martin is working on that involves the design of a blue jay.

To catch up you can view that introductory post here.

We are very happy to say that the jay wing carvings have now made it into wax, shown as the brown wing in the photo below. The wax wing was created by pouring wax into a rubber mold that we made around the grey pattern (carvings) that Martin sculpted. The pattern or carving in the photo above is beige in color, the natural color of basswood, but we then "paint" the pattern with a grey primer to fill in the grains and pores of the wood, giving us a smooth grey pattern and one without the distraction of wood grain. If we didn't fill in the grain the end result would be a bronze casting with a visible and distracting wood grain.

As with all of our pieces, we will use  the lost wax method when creating the eventual bronze castings as this method allows us to capture the intricate details of the wings and bird.

This particular sculpture was not commissioned.  Rather, it is just a bird we see often and one that Martin really likes as they have a lot of character and are fun to watch.  We had originally thought of just having the wings as door pulls but decided to turn it into a complete sculpture that can be used as wall art, yet still offer the option of mounting it on the door as a pull.  We are also happy to announce that it will be available in a limited edition of 25 and we will keep you posted on the progress with future posts.

If you are interested in other architectural hardware pieces modeled after birds or would like to discuss a custom order for your next hospitality or residential project, please contact us or visit our site at www.martinpierce.com.