Plaster Mold of Largest Section – Lamp Base

July 7th, 2009 at 07:51am bridgetparris

This week I worked in the MAD Studio for four days.  I spent three of them making the plaster mold of the largest section of my lamp base which is the “base”.  Attached are photos of the process.

The first two photos show my set up: To prepare the model for casting, (the model in this case was made of earthenware clay).  My friend Kathleen Shuen helped me the first day to plan the model set up, and to pour the first two sections of the mold.  She brought with her some vinyl “for sale signs” which we used to form a cylinder around the model to hold the plaster.  These are held together with duct tape.  You can use any type of sheet stiff vinyl to make round plaster molds.

Within this cylinder, we made further divisions, forming “walls” out of additional sheet vinyl.  This proved to be quite complicated, do to the nature of the organic form we were casting.  We divided the base into six total parts: four large “pie piece” shaped sections that encompassed most of the base, and then two smaller sections on top, for the “cloud” shape.  Preparing and pouring the four larger sections was two entire days of work.  On Thursday evening, I set up a smaller cylinder on the top of these four large sections to pour the last two sections of the mold.  The next photo shows this set-up.

The next image shows the completed mold, which looks a bit like an un-frosted wedding cake.

Today, I opened up the mold, following are some photos of the mold sections.

This particular model and mold were the most difficult tasks for my project, completing them made for me, a very Happy Fifth of July!

Bridget Parris

Entry Filed under: in the studio