During our study of the Ancients, we learned a lot about the Bronze Age, named for the brittle form of metallurgy before the Iron Age.
Which brings up another query. How accurate are the terms Bronze Age and Iron Age?
As noted in this article, the Bible references iron alongside bronze from the book of Genesis. Museum artifcacts pretty much showcase the same.
Instead, the term ages might better reflect an economic position than the popular worldview taken.
Phoenicians traded supplies for making bronze
With that background for a sense of timing, a popular culture from the days of King David was the Phoenicians who were famous sea traders.
Tin and copper were a popular combination to produce bronze, however there were rarely excavated from the same areas.
Bronze Art
Not only used for weapons, bronze was also used for sculptures, as well as parts of the tabernacle that we had recently constructed as a model.
The Mediterranean was known for its lost-wax process, called cire perdue.
This artist explains the five-step process, a combination of what artists call positive and negatives.
Antique bronze sculptures are in museums today for us to enjoy. Artists of the present day even continue the tradition of this old art.
Thus, we decided to make our own! However we weren’t up to the speed to do a true 5-step positive/negative combination.
How we made our bronze sculptures
Instead we used a simpler method which entailed positive and negative forms.
Out of Sculpey clay my kids sculpted a form of their choice: my daughter sculpted a flower, whereas my son sculpted a fish.
After mixing some Plaster of Paris, I poured it into their molds.
After the molds dried, we popped them out so they could be painted to look like bronze!
Epilogue 2024
I’m so glad we did this project, because we’ve since seen art from the Bronze Age in museums from Washington DC to the Getty in California. Because of this study, we have a greater appreciation for it. Amazing.
