Table of Contents
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Name: Elizabeth Branscum
Date and Time:
Location: Apartment Kitchen
Subject: Bread Molding Round I
Materials:
1 half bread mold
1 double sided bread mold
Beeswax
Campbell’s soup can
Frying pan
Chopsticks
Paintbrush
Olive oil
Paper towels
Molding putty
Packing tape
First Round
First, I laid out all my materials. I’ve never melted beeswax before and am a little scared to burn it, so want to have everything ready to go. My partner kindly agreed to act as a documentarian for the project.
I take stock of my double sided mold, which is actually cobbled together from two different molds made in the same loaf of bread – it’s been a few days since I baked the bread and it’s now pretty stale, which makes me think it will be challenging to make a seal neat enough to keep the beeswax in the mold itself. I try creating a little channel at the top of the mold, wider at the top and narrower at the bottom, as the Author/Practitioner suggests, but I should have done it when the bread was still fresh. Parts crumble away a bit, and I’ve lost the horn/ear part of one half of the mold. I decide to forge ahead anyway, and coat the mold with a little bit of olive oil and then try to seal the sides together with tape. I’m holding off on the putty because I think it will really stick to the bread and make it harder to pull the mold apart, so if I can mold successfully without it that would be better.
My half mold. Image URL: https://www.flickr.com/photos/128418753@N06/51259523500/in/album-72157719433022419/
The half mold is good to go, I simply coat it with olive oil and set it within reach of the stove. I have a gas stove, which feels more historically authentic to me since I’m actually heating on a flame. I preheat my frying pan for a few minutes, then set the tin can directly on the pan and fill it with about ¼ of the beeswax in the provided container, stirring with a chopstick. Watching beeswax melt is so interesting! I was not expecting it to turn so clear – it’s almost more like watching it dissolve than melt. One minute it’s there as a little kernel, the next it’s completely liquid. At the same time, it takes longer to melt than I expected, or rather it takes longer to get to the melting point than I expected. Once there, it seems to melt very quickly.
Once the beeswax is completely melted I pick up the can (it wasn’t on heat for very long and can be touched bare-handed at the top) and pour it into my doe mold as carefully as possible [VIDEO https://www.flickr.com/photos/128418753@N06/51259367979/in/album-72157719444074302/] – even so, I manage to over-fill it slightly. The wax doesn’t seem to be distributing evenly so I tilt the mold a bit to try to make sure it fills the small impressions left by the figure’s ears/horns.
While the half-mold sets, I quickly try to pour the rest of the melted wax into my two-piece mold. This proves a total failure – the packing tape has not stuck well to the bread at all, and there doesn’t seem to be a good seal between the pieces at all. I pour just a little bit of wax that seems to just run right through, and burn my hand a little, so stop and decide to reevaluate my sealing method.
After just a few minutes, the half mold has changed back to the color of the beeswax kernels. I was distracted trying to fill my second mold and didn’t watch it carefully as it cooled, which I now regret. I pry out the wax casting with a knife and it has worked surprisingly well! The ear and horn of the doe are visible, as well as very faint impressions of her eye and nostril hole. The legs have transferred most clearly, along with the little base at the bottom. Because I tilted the mold while the wax was hot, it’s a little uneven, but overall I’m very pleased with the result. Coated in olive oil, the beeswax almost looks like a newborn.
The wax drying in the mold. Image URL: https://www.flickr.com/photos/128418753@N06/51258623511/in/album-72157719444074302/
The first beeswax figure from the one-part mold.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/128418753@N06/51258623481/in/album-72157719444074302/
Name: (Also the name of your working partner)
Date and Time:
Location: Apartment Kitchen
Subject: Bread Molding Round Two
I open up the two-part mold and find, as I suspected, that the wax didn’t really pool in the mold itself at all. I scrape out what little wax is there and decide to try again, this time securing it with molding putty as well as tape. I’m a little skeptical whether this will work, as my channel for pouring wax is almost nonexistent, and I’m afraid to widen it because I think it will damage the mold. In order to try to achieve a better seal, I press the pieces together while securing them, and this diminishes my pouring channel even further. I decided not to recoat this mold in olive oil, since it didn’t really work the first time and I don’t want it to be over-oiled.
Image showing the wax that ran through my two part mold. Image URL: https://www.flickr.com/photos/128418753@N06/51259662225/in/album-72157719444074302/
I brush a tiny bit more olive oil on my one-piece mold and melt more beeswax, again about ¼ of the original amount provided. This time the wax melts faster since the pan has been heating for a while, and I have to use an oven mitt to manipulate the can, but manage to pour some wax into my half mold (leaving it to sit this time without tilting). I decide to try some of the other molds in the loaf this time, filling up the Squirtle figurine mold and the big heart.
and then turn to the double mold. I’m more confident in my seal this time so pour more boldly, which turns out to be a big mistake – once again, melted beeswax pretty much gets everywhere, though luckily this time I wore an oven mitt so didn’t get burned. There seems to be a hole at the bottom of the mold that I just can’t close completely, even with the molding putty and tape. Very frustrated and with the bread now coated in half-cooled wax and putty, I decide to give up on the two-part mold and toss it in the trash.
I then turn my attention to the wax cooling in my half-mold. The heart takes much longer to cool, but the small doe and Squirtle figurine are ready. The doe comes out beautifully again, but Squirtle breaks in the removal process – I’m okay with it because it came out with virtually no details, anyway. It’s pretty much a shapeless blob. I wonder if this is because it’s a plastic figurine and so has less weight to it, or maybe the details are etched less strongly? The bronze material definitely worked best.
The heart also breaks when I remove it, but it’s interesting because it has so much more surface area and no detail on the object itself, so the texture of the bread is a little more noticeable. Although, because I molded this bread while it was still slightly raw in the center, there is very little texture to begin with.
Takeaways:
1. Bread is not a terribly convenient molding material. While leaving the bread to sit for a few days between baking and casting did seem to allow the molds to ‘set’ a bit, it also made sealing the two part mold much more difficult. I wish I had done this all in one day. I can’t imagine trying to get two pieces of stale bread to create a seal in the sixteenth century.
2. I really wonder who first had the idea to use bread for something like this – I suppose it was such a common household item that a person with an experimental mindset could end up trying to use it for a variety of things. But using bread for something other than eating could only happen in a household with a surplus of bread. Or at least a household where there was definitely enough to eat.
3. Overall, this is a really impractical exercise, though I’ll admit I felt very delighted when my first cast came out looking something like the original object. Is there a more practical aim to a project like this one? What would it be? There doesn’t seem to be much of a chance of imitating nature; you couldn’t live cast in bread, surely. So why would a person do something like this?
Name: (Also the name of your working partner)
Date and Time:
Location:
Subject:
Name: (Also the name of your working partner)
Date and Time:
Location:
Subject:
Image URL: | https://flickr.com/photos/128418753@N06/49501852232/in/album-72157713010748872/ |
