page_title: Frank Roper
section_title: Lost-polystyrene casting in aluminium
hierarchical_section_title: Frank Roper / Lost-polystyrene casting in aluminium
caption_attribution_description: English: Peterborough Cathedral - an interior view The cathedral has to be seen to be appreciated, and there is a sense of community relating to the faith, not just a well preserved ancient building.
context_page_description: Frank Roper MBE was a British sculptor and stained-glass artist who undertook commissions for churches and cathedrals across Wales and England.
  In addition to religious commissions, Roper created a wide variety of sculptures which were sold privately and to corporate bodies. His non-religious sculpture included animals and birds, as well as animated sculptures and musical fountains.
context_section_description: Roper was one of the first sculptors to adopt the lost-polystyrene method, almost always casting in aluminium, perfecting the technique in 1964. It is now used widely in manufacturing (known as lost-foam casting).
  Over his career Roper worked in wood, stone and bronze, but many of his ecclesiastical commissions, as well as his musical fountains and water clocks, were cast in aluminium. He became interested in aluminium in the 1950s; the Stations of the Cross for St Martin's in Roath, Cardiff, completed in 1959, were an early example of his religious art in the metal.
  His work for Christ Church in Roath (1964) may have been his first commission using the lost-polystyrene method, a casting process recognisable by the texture of the metal, as the pitted nature of the expanded polystyrene remains visible.
   
  Modelling in expanded polystyrene allowed Roper to work on a larger scale. It is light and strong, enabling complicated structures to be built. The lower cost of aluminium, compared to bronze for example, made it possible to use sculpture where normally there would not be sufficient money available. Having his own home foundry also kept costs down and allowed for a very direct relationship with the finished work – "conception, creation and casting became one continuous process" he told the Church Times in 1994.
  In the 1976 BBC documentary Look Stranger, Roper explains that he would sculpt from a solid block of expanded polystyrene using a hot wire, soldering irons, home-made whittlers and sand-paper:
  "I like to use polystyrene. This is the most direct means of casting. One can enjoy the modelling and realise that the casting is very little effort. Once I've got the thing in polystyrene it's almost finished. The polystyrene is sunk into sand. I use dry sand from one of the beaches down here. You pour metal on top, then the polystyrene vaporises, the metal fills the space where the polystyrene was and you're left with an aluminium casting... if the casting fails I've lost the model."
  Roper is credited with inventing the process although other artists were developing this technique at the same time, including the sculptor Geoffrey Clarke, working in East Anglia. The Canadian sculptor Armand Vaillancourt  as well as Alfred M Duca, a sculptor and research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are also noted to have been the first to cast in this way.
caption: Crucifix, Peterborough Cathedral (1974)
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