Brothers use ancient techniques to carry on sculpture tradition
543 views · Published 27 December 2018 · 7:46 · Indexed 14 November 2026
Channel: AP Archive · 2018 · News & Politics
(22 Dec 2018) LEAD IN: A bronze workshop in the Burkinabe capital, Ouagadougou, is using ancient techniques to create beautiful sculptures. The foundry is run by two young brothers who learned the craft from their family. STORY-LINE: African life depicted in bronze. These beautiful handmade bronze scuptures are produced using ancient techniques in the Burkinabe capital, Ouagadougou. Sculptor Abdoulaye Derme is working, carrying on a family tradition that goes back generations in Burkina Faso. "It has been 15 years since I began to be a real sculptor," he says, adding that he was taught by his father. Several fires are burning in a crowded courtyard where 32-year-old Abdoulaye and his brother, Abdoul Razak, 25, are hovering around them poking at the coals with rudimentary metal instruments. The temperature on the street is around 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and it is much hotter inside the foundry. The steaming courtyard does not appear to be a place where craftsmen are producing beautiful works of art using ancient techniques, but that is exactly what it is. A foundry for lost-wax bronze sculptures. The two brothers are working with metal instruments and fire, but don't use gloves. Abdoul Razak uses a bicycle helmet to protect his head. He says his relationship with bronze is a life-long affair. "When I was ten, I made a little horse like that and I will never forget it. It will always be in my memory, I remember it as though it were yesterday," Abdoul Razak says. They work calmly, one patiently forming the necklace, hands and long legs on the dancer while the other mans the oven where liquid bronze, a strange yellow color, is boiling in long-handled metal containers. The process is labour intensive. They prepare a plaster mould of the figure they want to make in bronze. Then they heat up wax in a blackened old tin can, pour it inside and then place the plaster mold in water to cool down. When that is completed, they take out the wax figure inside and carefully carve it out into the figure they want to make. They use a combination of plastic and wax paper to add on a skirt and hat to make an African dancer. Once the wax figure is completed, they carefully cover it with a combination of clay and horse dung leaving a small hole at the bottom. The new form is then placed above the hot open air oven and quickly the dark wax inside drips out. Once the wax has melted away from the inside, one brother lifts the metal cup with molten bronze metal and pours it into the hole. The clay mould with the liquid bronze inside is then cooled. When it is fully cooled, the brothers use a hammer to break it open and pull out the bronze statue. It still needs to be worked and polished before it is ready. The statues are then sold for 5,000 to 10,000 CFA (West African francs, 7-15 euros). "The trade is very difficult," says the two sculptors' father, Rasmane Derme. Business is not flourishing owing to lack of tourism following terrorist attacks last March against the French Embassy and Army headquarters in the capital. According to the United Nations, Burkina Faso is the third poorest country in the world. Of the total population of just over 20 million people, 45-percent live in poverty on less than 1.25 US dollars a day. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/ You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/6552221bc7a08378595934a8d493ca8c
