Custom “Hands of Time” – Casting Your Hands In Lead Crystal – Part II

Bernie Huebner and Lucie Boucher - Hands of Time at CustomMade.com

Bernie Huebner and Lucie Boucher of Waterville, Maine are known for their beautiful fine art glass work, brilliant fused glasscapes that portray luminous scenes and cast colorful shadows throughout a space. But their company Stone Ridge Glass also specializes in a unique kind of custom memory making: photorealistic cast glass hands that capture the owners hand gesture, a moment in time, and a very personal human portrait.

Riace Warrior Head - Ancient Lost Wax Casting

At first glance, the sculptural glass “Hands of Time” look shocking real; they’re created using an ancient casting technique called “lost wax casting”, which according to Gardner’s Art through the Ages dates back to the early figurative bronze sculptures of Ancient Greece and Mesopotamia!

Stone Ridge Glass adapts lost wax casting to a very contemporary art form. In this second installment of the Stone Ridge Glass “Hands of Time” series, Bernie walks us through the beginning steps involved in the lost-wax process used to cast the customer’s hands for their very own “Hands of Time”.

These images show the making of several different castings, but together they illustrate the steps we use in the classical lost wax process.   To get a glimpse of the beginning of the process, will look at the mother and child whose hands were cast together for their commemorative piece “Just Like Me”.

Secret ingredient Crisco seals the wrists of a mother and daughter into the mold needed to make the wax positive.

After a curing time of only about 15 minutes, the subject can pull her hand out of the soft rubbery mold material.

Molten wax is poured into the mold.

Curious to see how Crisco and wax lead to glowing cast lead crystal hands? Check back for the final installment of the Stone Ridge Glass Hands of Time Series, and contact Bernie and Lucie if you’re eager to commission your own personal sculpture!