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Matinee: 'The Artist: Giorgio Giuman' Share This on LinkedIn   Tweet This   Forward This

3 September 2022

Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?

So we're pleased to present the 464th in our series of Saturday matinees today: Giorgio Giuman, The Artist.

This 4:45 presentation directed and shot by Marescotti Ruspoli follows Giorgio Giuman as he goes to work before the sun rises and the fog lifts. He stokes the furnace and makes sure everything is working before "the boys get here."

They aren't boys any more. And they get quickly to work in their Murano glass factory.

But Giuman's workshop of some 76 glass makers doesn't only blow glass. Giuman developed a clever lost wax glass casting method that professional glassmakers, sculptors, designers and artists use to realize their ideas.

Giuman explains the process:

The whole process of wax casting is similar to that of bronze casting. It includes silicon mold, wax prototype, refractory dough mold and a final glass cast. Initially, an artist brings a prototype, a model: either a clay model, a 3D printed prototype or any other ready-made. After which, we can make a silicon mold from it. Then, we make a wax cast, which is the exact copy of the artist's initial model. Afterwards, we cover the wax cast with a refractory dough and the armature and heat it. Due to the heat, the wax melts, leaving a hollow space which we fill with a liquid glass of the chosen color. The final mold is now ready to go into the glass furnace. After the tempering is complete, we remove the refractory dough and reveal the work in glass.

The finishing process can include polishing with acids or diamond sanding tools. And the technique scales from small items to large ones.

What we found intriguing about this piece, however, wasn't the innovative technology. It was Giuman.

"Satisfaction come from creating things other people aren't capable of," he says. "Why can't men desire to equal God?"

As creators, he means. And for inspiration, he has to look no further than nature, whose creations, he admits, "we will never be able to match." We should be amazed, he says, by what surrounds us.

And even in the early morning fog, we are, we are.


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