metal_castin_history
A Brief History of Cast Metal
Humankind have been working metals for thousands of years in order to produce objects that helped to shape their environment from weapons and tools to objects of exquiset beauty.
Here at Master Signs Limited we use some of the oldest and best understood production techniques to create unique castings for our customers.  We simply can’t use the processes developed for “mass production” due to the nature of our product, every cast metal house sign is different. Each house sign is then hand painted and allowed to dry before being delivered to our customers all over the world.

Early Metal Casting
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The process of creating tools, weapons and art by pouring molten metal into a mould and allowing it to cool has been used for over 5000 years. The earliest example of this metal casting technique is a copper frog. It is believed to have been cast in Mesopotamia around 3200B.C.

The processes and techniques of casting metals using moulds are believed to have been started in the Middle East although historical evidence appears to suggest that the process was further developed in China and India.
It is also believed that the Greeks created many statues using the casting process but few examples survive as metals would have been re-melted during times of war to create weapons.

The Middle Ages
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It appears that the technology for casting metals in Europe may not have been as successful as in the East.

There is certainly no documentation of such processes until the 12th Century when the German monk Thophilus wrote his treatise which included information on Painting, Glass Making & Metalwork - “On Divers Arts” 1140A.D. It would appear that at this time the church was one of the driving forces for the further development of these techniques in the casting of bells and other clerical equipment.

By the early 1500s, the quality achieved by the process of relief casting was on a par with that of earlier “antique metal casting”. Casting using a method of forming sand to create the relief mould was common for small, one off, parts whilst permanent moulds were now being used for serial casting.

Early Mass Produced Metal Casting in China
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Archaeological evidence has shown that China had mastered the melting of iron by around 500B.C. some 2000 years before Europe.
Recent excavations have discovered cast tools and farm equipment that were “mass produced”

Early Mass Produced Metal Casting in Europe.
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Gun-barrels and bullets were among the first items to be produced scale using cast iron on a large in Europe. The techniques used were derived from similar techniques used for the casting of bronze using loam templates during the Middle Ages. The use loam templates were soon superseded by the use of permanent, cast iron templates for the production of bullets.
These techniques using cast iron were used to create such items as water pipes and bells by the middle of the 15th Century. The 1500’s marks the start of the first period of artistic applications using cast iron plates for stoves, ovens, monuments and fountains.

The Industrial Revolution
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During the second half of the 18th Century the “Industrial Revolution” brought in the development of new technologies and an increased demand for cast metal parts used in the machines associated with mass production.
The artistic design of iron casts flourished during this period, not being limited only to decorative objects but also applied to the production of everyday items and machine parts.