The Making of Bob
The creation of the statue goes through several different stages. It begins with developing the idea of how it will look and creating this as a scale model.The full-size sculpture is made by creating a silicon rubber mould, before it is cast in bronze.
Tanya says: “The first step was speaking with James. It was James’s memory that was most important, finding out how he wanted the sculpture to look, the characteristics that he wanted to convey. Then the researching began. I pulled together hundreds of photos and videos that seemed to mirror the qualities that James was after. I would show them to him and get him to identify elements within them that he particularly liked: the look of Bob’s eyes, the tips of his ears, how his little feet came together. As a sculptor, you’re generally working from hundreds of different photos.
“I produced a maquette — a small Bob cast in bronze. It was really helpful for me to do the small version first to iron out any kinks and for James to feed back any aspects that he wanted to change.
For example, Bob’s head on the final sculpture was turned more to the side because James wanted Bob to engage with people sitting on the bench and be seen from the front.”
Once the final version had been cast, there were just a few finishing touches to be applied.
“The molten bronze cools really quickly,” says Tanya. “Then you chip off the ceramic mould and you’re left with this lump of bronze with sprues and that has to be cleaned up and polished. With Bob, there was an extra stage because the spines on the books had to be hand engraved and then he was returned to the foundry for patination. Bronze is quite a flat gold colour and to get the traditional bronze look, which happens when it’s out in the elements, chemicals are applied which react to the bronze and artificially age it to get your traditional bronze look.”