Following the successful casting of the very first Bronze casting of a hand woven spherical sculpture in 2013, Rachel was keen to develop the method further and refine some of the processes.

The biggest obstacle was the wax which was brittle and temperature sensitive. After a number of experiments a wax was refined that had a higher bees wax content which gave the her a malleable material that moved well and did not have an overriding memory, so did not try to return to its original shape.

Wanting to push the method further, this sphere is much larger than the original and measures 120cm in diameter which increases the surface area greatly. This added surface area took a lot more wax to weave to the desired thickness and thus became very heavy. Gravity is not kind to soft mailable materials so a number of methods had to be explored to first keep the sphere shape, and secondly to allow access for the artist to weave areas.

The successful wax sphere took approximately 18 months of work and was commissioned to be realised in bronze in 2017.

It now sits within a private garden in Bath, UK and features delicate weaving that fools the viewer, what appears as an open and delicate hand woven sculpture is, in actual fact, over 250 kilos in weight and nestles gently into the landscape.