Word: rudier
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...Rodin," recalls the maitre, "was not particularly friendly. He asked me a few questions and then handed me a bust-by another sculptor." Rudier worked long hours forming the mold of sand, tapping, carving and measuring it to exact proportions, finally cast the sculpture in a single piece of bronze. "When I returned with the finished product, Rodin looked at it for a long time and caressed it with his fingers. All he said was 'excellent.'" But from that moment on, until the sculptor's death in 1917, Rudier was the only caster allowed to touch...
...orders piled up, but Rudier played no favorites; everyone got the same painstaking effort. The only favoritism he allowed himself was in the works he chose for his country home outside Paris and the figures lining his tiny gallery at Malakoff. There he collected such masterpieces as Maillol's Summer, Renoir's Laundress, Bourdelle's Heracles Archer, Rodin's John the Baptist. About 20 years ago, he cast a beautiful bronze of Rodin's L'Ombre, and ordered it set aside to mark his grave when he dies...
Work for the Team. Rudier long did most of the actual casting himself, but as his fame spread beyond France, he began training a team of assistants. He taught them his secrets, but none could quite duplicate his touch. Whenever business slacked off, Rudier & Co. made metal castings for French industry. "To keep his team together," says a friend, "Rudier would cast cannon balls if necessary...
...Malakoff factory last week, the orders were piling in. Lean and a little tired with age, Rudier walked through his foundry, supervising blue-overalled workers as they put the finishing touches to a massive statue by Henri Laurens for the Paris Museum of Modern Art. There was a casting of Rodin's huge Gate of Hell to be shipped 13,000 miles to a Tokyo museum, a repair job on three nymphs and two water-spouting dragons from Versailles' fountains, an order from Rotterdam to cast a statue by Zadkine commemorating the city's ordeal under Nazi...
...Eugene Rudier knows that he is the last of the great master casters and he fears that the old skills will die with him. "They will no longer know how to cast a grande piece in its entirety," he said sadly. "They will cast arms, heads and legs and patch them together." His workers agree. "When the chef de cuisine dies," said one, "the restaurant will go on serving soup, but it won't be exactly the same soup any more...