Roman Bronze Works

Artist Info

Roman Bronze WorksAmerican (New York, NY), 1897 - 1988

Roman Bronze Works, now operated as Roman Bronze Studios, is a bronze foundry in New York City. Established in 1897 by Riccardo Bertelli, it was the first American foundry to specialize in the lost-wax casting method,[1] and was the country's pre-eminent art foundry during the American Renaissance (ca. 1876-1917).

History

Bertelli was a chemical engineer from Genoa who combined his skill in chemistry with his interest in art in starting a foundry.[2] The foundry trademarked its namesake, Roman Bronze Works in 1900.[3]

In 1908, the foundry built a home and studio for sculptor Harry Merwin Shrady at White Plains, New York. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 as the Leo Friedlander Studio.[4]

Long a sub-contractor to Louis Comfort Tiffany's Tiffany Studios, the foundry moved in 1927 to Tiffany's red brick factory in Corona, Queens, New York.[5]

The foundry's mold makers, casters, chasers and finishers, and patinaters cast sculptures from plaster and terra cotta models provided by sculptors. They also scaled down monumental and other finished works for editions of collectors' bronzes, allowing works by Daniel Chester French, Augustus Lukeman [6] and Augustus Saint-Gaudens to ornament a private library or drawing room.

From 1898, Frederic Remington worked exclusively with Roman Bronze Works, as did Charles M. Russell. Remington bronzes were being cast by Roman Bronze Works as late as the 1980s.[7]

Roman Bronze Works was purchased in 1946 by Salvatore Schiavo, whose father had worked at the foundry since 1902. His nephew, Philip J. Schiavo, the grandson of the first Schiavo, was the president of the foundry until its closing.[7]

After the foundry closed, original plaster models of major works by American artists Frederic Remington, Daniel Chester French, Charles Russell, Bessie Potter Vonnoh and Anna Hyatt Huntington were auctioned off in New York on September 17, 1988.[9] Some of the molds were moved to warehouses in Copiague, New York, under the aegis of American Art Restoration, Inc.[10]

The business archives were preserved and are now at the Amon Carter Museum Library in Fort Worth, Texas.[11] In 2002, Schiffer Publishing released a book about Roman Bronze Works, A Century of American Sculpture; The Roman Bronze Works Foundry, written by Lucy D. Rosenfeld and based on the firm's ledgers and archival photographs at the museum.