The Most Beautiful Art Book in the World

We begin 2018 with the wonderful news that the casting book our work was featured in last year has been listed as the number one most beautiful art book in the world!  

We are glad it's not just our opinion that this book is well worth the price tag, and has enormous value to any art fan or art book collector. It is filled with page upon page of gorgeous photographs of all different kinds of casting and one of the most incredibly inspiring books we've seen. 

Check out the entire top ten art book list here on Artnet.com 

And you can purchase your own copy of 'CAST: Art and objects made using humanity's most transformational process' by Jen Townsend and Renée Zettle-Sterling here on Amazon. 

Out of this World

The National Space Centre in Leicester, UK. 

Rockabelly Lifecasts is proud to announce a new commission from the National Space Centre in Leicester. In October, we were invited to visit the Space Centre to cast the hand prints of visiting astronaut and author, Colonel Alfred Merrill "Al" Worden. Colonel Warden was a NASA engineer and astronaut who piloted the Command Module of the Apollo 15 lunar mission in 1971.

Colonel Al Worden, gets his hands cast by André Masters of Rockabelly Lifecasts at the National Space Centre, UK. 

The mould of Colonel Al Worden's hands, ready to be cast in stone for the Wall of Fame at the National Space Centre.

As well as being one of only 24 people in the history of mankind to ever fly to the moon, he is most famous for holding the Guinness World Record for being the most 'isolated human in history' when he was orbiting in the command module while his crew were on the surface of the moon, making him 2,235 miles away from the nearest human being. CJ was so excited, having once dreamed of becoming an astronaut herself in her youth (before she worked out she got scared traveling over 50 mph and travel sick going up in a lift). 

'The Pioneer' sculpture dedicated to Ed White at the National Space Centre. 

Sadly, CJ was unable to attend on this occasion due to a prior booking, so André had the solo honour of performing the Hollywood-style hand casts of Colonel Worden, who afterwards was kind enough to sign a copy of his own book for us. 

Rockabelly Lifecasts were chosen from the nation's lifecasters to continue a tradition at the space centre for casting visiting astronauts, and asked to create an updated version of similar casts that had been done in the past. A spokesperson for the National Space Centre stated that we had been chosen for our excellent reputation for tackling complex projects after having been recommended by several other companies. 

Although CJ was desperately miffed not to get to meet a real live NASA hero this time, she was somewhat comforted when André brought her back some freeze dried space ice cream and the good news that they will both be returning to the National Space Centre early next year to cast a major big name in modern space travel. Watch this space for more space news! 

Inspiring new book features the work of André and CJ from Rockabelly Lifecasts

Image courtesy of Jen Townsend and Renée Zettle-Sterling

A brand new book, 'Cast' by Jen Townsend and Renée Zettle-Sterling, explores the exciting medium of casting - of which lifecasting is just one small part. The book covers art and objects cast in a vast array of materials and techniques, demonstrating the depth and breadth of casting as an artform in its own right, as well as an essential process in creating many other types of art.   André Masters & CJ Munn from Rockabelly Lifecasts/Masters & Munn are just two of many artist contributors from around the world whose beautiful work fills the pages of this inspiring and fascinating new publication. 

The book is published by Schiffer Publishing, and is available for pre-order from Amazon. Or for a limited time you could win your own copy by entering this competition. 

All good things come to those who wait...

I've known plumbers with leaky pipes in their houses, and professional cleaners whose kitchens were pretty grim, by their own admission. I don't judge them one bit, because whatever your profession, if you are as passionate about keeping your clients happy as we are, then using your talents for yourself, your home or your own family always seem to come last. Which is why, even with more than 40 collective years of experience in lifecasting between us, André and I still don't have many casts of ourselves or our own family members. In fact, I've often joked that for all the gorgeous casts I've made of other women, I don't seem to have anything flattering of my own body amongst our collection of work. 

Back in 2005, before André and I were a couple, I actually asked him to help me make a cast of myself to test a new technique I wanted to experiment in. Back then, André was the only other lifecaster within a few counties of me and we'd worked with each other quite a lot already so I trusted him completely to help me achieve this particular artistic goal.

I'd been inspired by the work of another lifecaster from County Durham, called Richard Neal, who to this day remains one of my favourite artists in our field and whose innovative work I have always loved. All those years ago, Richard was experimenting with molten pewter as a lifecasting medium, as well as some gorgeous textured clay pieces. He was kind enough to share his secret method with me at the time and to give me his blessing to have a go myself, which I just couldn't wait to do. So I asked André to help make a mould of my body that I could use to have a go at this incredible technique, which he agreed to do.  

This is me, back in 2005!

The moulding part went well - we opted for a simple back, bottom and thighs cast to give a real sense of my shape. However then life got busy and complicated and instead of getting on with the pewter cast, I had to put the mould in storage and get on with all the other work on my books. This mould sat in the back end of my attic gathering dust for the last 12 and a half years, waiting for me to get around to it. You know those craft projects you always mean to finish and never seem to get around to - I have several on the go at the moment (I WILL finish making those cushions and that narwhal embroidery I started one day). Every time I had to pop to my attic for something I would see it, think 'I must get around to that' and then promptly either forget about it completely or just be too busy with work to even think about making something for myself.

So it was with this mould of my 30-something bottom until last year, when a friend of ours decided to have her own bottom cast but fancied something a little bit different. Having offered her several of the finishes we already do and are known for, I remembered the beautiful pewter technique we'd always meant to have a go at. To my delight she agreed to be my guineapig for the project and I set to work making the mould of her body. However, when it came to it, I was too nervous to risk ruining her mould with molten pewter (that I'd only ever used on very tiny moulds in the past). Then I remembered my own bottom mould up in the attic, being used as a skate park by the local mice, no doubt, and decided now was the perfect time to experiment on this original mould so I could get the hang of things before branching out to my friend's mould. 

I woz here.    

A few scorch marks and singed eyebrows later, I'd more or less perfected the technique Richard had taught me 12 and a half years ago, or at least adapted it to suit my own needs. It was sweaty, smelly, fairly exhausting and slightly dangerous work, but I was so excited to be doing something new and beautiful that I dragged out the second mould of our friend and worked on that one too. The finishing of the pieces was a real team effort, with André doing an amazing job finishing what I'd started, along with some substantial elbow grease from our new assistant, Luke. When we finished the two pieces, we stood back and admired the work and knew we'd done a grand job. Our friend was absolutely thrilled with her botty and the cast of my own bumptious rump is on our living wall in pride of place, gleaming in full view of the postman each day or anyone who comes calling. I've waited a long time to feel this beautiful, and to be captured in art the way we do for others every day of the week and I jolly well intend to show it off proudly.  Although I do keep turning to André and saying 'Why didn't I know I had such a nice bottom 12 years ago?!!'...and wondering where it went.  

Finally! A decent cast of myself that I can proudly show off to the post man, couriers, people canvassing for the Labour Party, Jehovah's Witnesses and any other passing riff raff I can persuade to admire my glorious metal buttocks. And who would notice my chipped wallpaper when there is such a gleaming butt to behold?!

This new technique is so perfect for women like me, or men, come to think of it, who might be pleased with their overall body shape but more self-conscious or critical of their own skin texture, cellulite, scars etc. Being a textured cast in itself, all the focus is on the shape and the stunning medium of real pewter - making everyone cast this way look like some kind awesome sexy space android. And, let's face it, who wouldn't like to look like an awesome sexy space android? 

Not my butt....the other one. 

Casts in this finish range from £1500-£6000 depending on size and complexity. Which is absolutely worth it for a piece of unique and stunning artwork of your own or a lover's body that you can treasure forever and a very small price to pay for my singed eyebrows. 

Awards, good news and celebrations!

Today we're being terribly un-British by drawing attention to some wonderful things that have happened recently. It goes against nature to puff ourselves up too much, and risk being seen as smuggedy-smug-smug, but with all the stress and strife in the world at the moment, we are determined to celebrate the good things in life - whether small or big - and hope you will celebrate with us. 

                 Silly, slightly drunken, happy face of success!

Last month we attended the Kent Women in Business Awards, where CJ was in the final for no less than three categories - Business Achievement of the Year, Creative Businesswoman of the Year and our absolute favourite, Best Customer Service in Kent. It was a fabulous night, full of frocks, frolicking and fantastic inspiration meeting the other finalists and winners. Kent has some incredibly talented and hard-working entrepreneurs of both sexes and it's always great to make new contacts in the local business community. CJ/Rockabelly won the Runner Up prize in Best Customer Service, which we were both delighted with and she was able to cheer on two of her good friends, talented graphic designer, Kaye Sedgwick-Jones of Ohhh Kaye who won Runner Up in the Creative Business category and the lovely Karina O'Donnell, independent wedding celebrant, who nailed this year's Business Achievement Award and made us all proud. 

If that wasn't fabulous enough, we found out a couple of weeks ago that Rockabelly Lifecasts made to the final of yet another awards night. The Kent Creative Awards are fairly new - this being only the second year of them running - and we are delighted to be in the final of Kent Creative Business of the Year! A night of schmoozing to look forward to with our fellow creatives when the awards take place in May. 

Just when we thought it couldn't get any better, our fine art brand, 'Masters & Munn' has got off to the most incredible start to the year. Starting off with four major sculpture sales in Kent and Surrey, we then received the astounding news that the first of the limited edition sculptures of our most beloved and well-known sculpture, 'Icarus had a Sister' has been bought by a private collector all the way in Australia! Only five of these stunning sculptures will ever be made, and to part with the first, our 'baby' who took nine years to complete from start to finish, was quite an emotional event. We could not have parted with her to a more perfect buyer - one who loves and appreciates her as much as we do. We are hoping to visit Australia to install her ourselves if our schedule allows. More on this adventure as time unfolds, but when we painstakingly constructed those beautiful wings, one copper feather at a time, we had no idea her fledgling flight would be to the other side of the world!

     "Icarus had a Sister", Masters & Munn, 1 of 5 limited edition sculptures. 

In celebration of all this happy news, we wish to share the joy with a competition prize for our new subscribers. If you or someone you know would like to receive a signed 50 by 40cm giclée art print of 'Icarus had a Sister' then subscribe to our mailing list. All subscribers will be entered into a competition to win a print, the very first in this size that we have ever done, signed by us, to grace your wall. The deadline is January 31st 2018, and the winner will be picked at random from all subscribers using a random number generator. For full details of the prize draw terms and conditions, click here. In the meantime, please share this post with any of your friends you think might like to win a print or follow our occasional news and special offers. There are also newsletter signup forms on nearly every page on our website. 

A Glass Act - 70 Year Glazing Legacy Remains in Safe Hands

One of the things André and I love most about our job is meeting so many interesting and talented people from all walks of life. When we met Cath and Alan Bell last year, of Bell's Glass & Glazing, Rainham, we were fascinated by their family story and delighted to be asked to collaborate on a piece of work that would help them celebrate a truly special occasion....

A glass slipper changed the life of Cinderella forever, but she’s not the only one for whom glass has been rather lucky. This year heralds the celebration of 70 years in the glass trade for one Kentish business, that has been passed down from father to son for three generations, with help from a fourth! 

HR Bell, as it was then known, was established in 1947 by glazing contractor Harry Bell in the city of Canterbury. Harry was born in 1915 and learnt his trade working for another glass company that went out of business. Like many young men of his generation, he spent some time in the army, but decided after the Second World War to start his own glazing business. After the war, glass was in very short supply, so he had to travel all the way to London to collect each sheet of glass, but business soon flourished thanks to contacts gained during his training and plenty of work due to Luftewaffe bombing damage in Kent. Even Harry’s father-in-law helped out in the business by re-silvering mirrors in his garden shed, due to the expense of buying new mirrors in post-war Britain. 

Harry was a real character, and well known in the local area for transporting the sheets of glass using his motorbike and sidecar, with his brave wife Norah, crouching in the sidecar beside him, clinging onto the glass for dear life as he zoomed along the Kentish roads. As business improved, Harry was able to invest in some small vans to replace the famous motorbike…much to Norah’s relief, no doubt! 

Within a couple of years, the family business had already grown enough to employ 18 members of staff, but his family remembers him as not having been overly keen on having a business at all - wishing to avoid the stress that often comes with it. However, the demand was there and the success of the business snowballed and, much to the appreciation of younger members of the family, he decided to stick with it. 

Sadly, Harry’s life was cut tragically short in a gliding accident at Rochester airport in 1967 aged just 52, and his son Mike Bell, who shared his passion for gliding as a hobby, was left to pick up the pieces of the business after the loss of his father. 

Although Mike initially felt he had no choice in the matter of taking over the family firm, he soon developed a great passion for the business and with a strong worth ethic he pushed the company forward into new directions. By the 1980s, Mike had grown the company to having 95 employees and several branches, but still thought of it as a family business and employed people who he thought would love working with him and whom he saw as extended members of the family. 

Michael retired in 1996 and now the business (these days trading as Bell’s Glass & Glazing in Rainham) is managed with pride and passion by Michael’s son, Alan Bell, who continues it as a largely family-run business; with his own children, Charlotte and Thomas, learning the glass trade with plans to follow in the footsteps of their father, grandfather and great-grandfather before them.  Alan believes the lasting success of the business is down to following in the work ethic of his father and grandfather before him, being the first one in and the last to leave each day; high standards of work with good, consistent customer relationships and a really personal service that you get from dealing with a reliable Kentish family business. 

In honour of this amazing family achievement of 70 years in the glass trade, Alan and his wife, Cath, looked around for a special way to celebrate their business success and mark a very important milestone for the whole family. This is when Cath approached Rockabelly Lifecasts and asked us about creating a bespoke piece of art for Bell’s showroom. We were delighted to help Alan and Cath and set to work creating a unique piece of art formed from casts of Cath and Alan’s entwined hands recreated in…of course…glass! The lead crystal glass sculpture took many weeks to produce and every stage of the process was hand-made to Cath and Alan’s specifications. 

“When Cath and Alan approached me,” CJ said, “I wanted to create something for them that paid homage to the nature of their family business, the beauty of the medium of glass itself, and also reflected the close family ties that have given the business its strength over the years.”

 Now Cath and Alan Bell have been immortalised in glass sculpture in celebration of 70 years and counting with this wonderful Kentish family business, and they look forward to passing on the baton to their own children when they are ready to take the reins.  We hope you will join us in wishing this very special family business a very happy anniversary indeed. 

The finished glass cast by Rockabelly Lifecasts to celebrate a 70 year family glazing legacy! 

A word on hand or foot casting kits and why we don't rate them.

Rockabelly Lifecasts has been designing and selling DIY casting kits for our mail order clients for many years now. We have fairly strong opinions on which types of casting are really suitable for beginners and which ones are not. Sometimes those types of body casting that in, our professional opinion, are better left to professionals and can even be potentially dangerous to do without the right kind of knowledge and experience. Other types, such as hand or foot casting kits can have a very high 'disappointment rate' for beginners attempting it at home due to simple things like air bubbles getting into the mould as you pour your plaster or not being able to control the pose of the baby. The quality of instructions that come with kits available on the market varies hugely, as do the quality of materials included in such kits, with no central governing body keeping an eye on standards.

A very many of our clients have come to us for baby hand or feet casts or family group casts just desperate to get it done properly after having previously tried and failed (often multiple times) with cheap kits they bought on the internet or in stores or were given as well-meaning gifts.  The true art of casting is not simply in being able to take a good mould from the subject/model but also in setting up the pose well, knowing the art of pouring the casting material correctly, and how to deal with any problems that occur ('perfect' casts straight out of the mould are incredibly rare and most will need varying degrees of hand-sculpting to finish them to a professional standard. You cannot easily teach these re-sculpting techniques in a kit form).

Many kit instructions do not state accurate drying times for long-lasting casts or provide the best advice in terms of decoration or display which can lead to the cast moulding and rotting away after as little time as 18 months. Some of these, where moisture has been trapped inside the cast and gradually rises to the surface may develop 'Black Mould', a known carcinogen. For the relatively small difference in price between even an up-market DIY kit and a professional baby casting session which will guarantee you excellent results, it really is an easy choice for a personal piece of sculpture that is so unique and precious and going to be cherished for a lifetime, possibly generations to come. We believe the same is true even when working with adult hand casting kits due to similar problems with air bubbles/missing fingertips.

We do encourage experimentation and fun with our own kits for other body parts or other good quality kits from some reputable lifecasting companies who specialise in this area with many years of experience and really understand the health and safety precautions as well as the finer nuances of the craft itself. But for some body parts we truly believe it is worth splashing out that extra little bit on a professional rather than risking disappointment and wasted time and money. We know that not everyone agrees with us, but having been selling our kits since 2001 we have had only three kits returned to date in all those years, and not one of those for reasons of cast 'failure' or because of anything negative about the kit itself. Very few other companies can make the same claim. We do not sell 'kit refills', because our kits are designed to work first time to our customer's satisfaction, and not require you to spend out yet more money 'to get it right', thinking that any problems were your fault rather than with the design of a kit. Put simply, owning a pair of scissors would not make you a hairdresser - and similarly, buying casting materials will not instantly make you a lifecaster. However, that doesn't mean you can't have a go at this wonderful art form, or learn new skills with practise, of course. But it definitely is worth looking into your options before you part with your money to make sure you have a great chance of success or if you'd be better off/safer hiring a professional or even investing in a couple of days of training so you can really accelerate your learning and cast safely with confidence. 

We only sell kits that we believe our customers have every chance of success with, and we offer personal advice by phone and email to any kit customer who is unsure or has issues or questions. However this offer of one-to-one extra help is very rarely taken up by our clients because our instructions are so thorough and detailed. We are not interested in peddling the kind of kits that have a high failure rate by nature of the complexity involved because at Rockabelly Lifecasts we only want happy, satisfied customers who enjoy and get success from the casting process either via a private appointment or via our kits. For this reason you will not see any baby hand or foot casting kits, or indeed adult hand casting or family group casting kits in our web shop, nor will we personally recommend any on the market. We are happy, however, to advise you on our other kinds of kits you can have great fun with regardless of your level of artistic experience and get great results from with no risk of wasting your hard-earned money. If we think one of our kits will be unsuitable for your required task we will always be completely honest. In terms of baby casting, for example, for just the cost of a family meal out or a modest pair of shoes (often soon forgotten) you can have something truly lasting, memorable and beautifully hand-made especially for your family that grows in emotional value year upon year. We think that's worth every penny. And our customers do too. 

If you've had mixed results with a kit you've bought elsewhere and don't know how to salvage things, do feel free to get in touch, perhaps including a photo or two of your home made casts and we will advise you in the best way to fix any damage and be happy to quote for carrying out repairs, replacements or material upgrades. We all love a bargain, but don't compromise on the quality of purchases that could become your most precious, prized and priceless possessions.