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‘Small Judge’ was cast in the School of Art foundry, which was set up by long time sculpture tutor Tom Taylor in 1968, after he returned from studying bronze casting in Italy. Taylor set up the somewhat illegal foundry unbeknownst to the Buildings Registrar and the Waimairi County Council.

The establishment of the foundry must have been a boon for Rodney Broad, who devoted his 1968 Diploma in Fine Arts thesis Cire Perdue to describing the technical process of lost wax casting. ‘Small Judge’ would appear to be one of the works created while Broad was working on his thesis. Broad was concerned that more sculptors should use bronze as a medium, and that they should not be put off by the somewhat highbrow image of the material.

������Cire Perdue, Broad suggested that “Bronze is a traditional material, but I feel it is during the last 60 years that sculptors have given it new dimensions, exciting patination, and placed greater emphasis on the abstract qualities of the metal itself … The directness and flexibility of the plastic wax form, together with the emotive richness of the bronze, are possibly the strength and weakness of the medium.”

'Small Judge' comes from the College of Education Collection, which was amalgamated into the University’s art collection in 2007.