Buddy Franklin’s Boot

Sydney star Lance Franklin kicked his 1000 career goal, becoming just the sixth VFL/AFL player to reach this milestone.

Commissioned by Thinkerbell to commemorate this occasion we created ‘Buddy’s’ boot out of glass.

The process was lengthy, taking Buddy’s actual boot and working through a series of positive and negative castings to finally create the bronze negative blowing mould.

We needed to make the mould in three parts so that we could create accuracy with the detail and form and also seperate the mould to release the glass. Once we had the negative plaster we could work towards casting each of these elements in bronze.

Bronze was chosen as the final mould material for its accuracy to detail and its resilience throughout the blowing process. When blowing a quantity run a mould can deteriorate quite quickly if not from a more permanent material such as bronze.

Once the glass boots were blown and at room temperature we cut off the excess glass with a diamond saw and ground this opening to a smooth satin finish.