Casting with Phil Hardaker in Stoke-on-Trent!

Left: Phil and me in his studio in Stoke-on-Trent. Right: Phil's collection of plastic toys and other interesting and bizarre ephemera!

Phil is famous for his use of recycled ceramics and also his beautiful and narrative castings of objects and hand moulded items.  He has amassed an interesting collection of mainly plastic objects, toys and ephemera over the years which is housed in his studio.  Some of these intriguing items are cast and incorporated into works of art.  Phil also hand builds and sculpts narrative objects too,  that are also cast and added to the artworks.  He very kindly agreed to mentor me in this process.

Left and right: An odd assortment of ornaments, twigs and shells for casting!

I turned up at Phil's studio with some very impractical objects to cast!  Things like Thistle's I soon learnt could not be cast and would need to be made by hand!  But objects such as tree bark, shells (which I wanted to try as the shape of clams is so beautiful), twigs and simple ornaments is possible.  All objects were cast in plaster but not without a coating of soap solution applied first, to make removing the objects from the casts possible!  

Left: The finished moulds. Middle: Casting a clam shell. Right: Clam shell, mould and cast porcelain shell ready for firing.

The actual moulds are beautiful objects in their own right and can be used repeatedly as long as kept in good condition. These first experiments of mould making and casting used porcelain, but I have also discovered that white earthenware is a good option too.  More to follow on this!

Left: Phil's cast porcelain decorative found object. Right: the plaster cast it came from.