Note 17 — Chapter X · MILITARY MEDALLIONS

Perhaps it will be well to briefly explain this system of founding, as it is not generally understood. Adeline in "The Art Dictionary," p. 243, describes it as follows:—

"A process of bronze founding in which the core is covered with an accurate representation of the object to be cast in wax, the wax being of the intended thickness of the metal. The wax is then coated with a porous clay, and the whole mass is put in a pit and baked. During the process of baking the wax melts and runs off through apertures left for the purpose. The space left after the wax is melted is occupied by the metal. This, the oldest method of bronze founding, is probably the best, and in the present day it is being pretty generally adopted. In the method, which for some time has been in vogue, the core was made of the exact size of the object to be cast and afterwards pared down, so as to leave space for the metal to run in between the core and the mould."