Trade Names: A medieval sculptor might feel at home in a foundry founded in 1986 which uses age-old techniques. Rose Doyle reports

CAST, the bronze foundry in South Brown Street, Dublin 8, has a pre-history which gives it a status and importance in the culture of the country which belies its relative youth - it has been in business for 18 years.

There's none more conscious of the foundry's role in things than sculptor Colm Brennan, co-founder of CAST with Leo Higgins. Brennan, a life-force as large as the bronze work in his foundry, is a man who passionately believes that sculpture is part of what life's all about.

"It's medieval," says Brennan with relish and accuracy as fires burn in crucible furnaces, bronze ingots arrive and time-worn tools like chasing chisels, spatulas and die grinders are wielded all around.

"Technology wise, the single biggest change is that we're now using a process called 'ceramic shell'; along with Kinsale gas and electricity, it's about our only concession to the 21st century. We still use a process called lost wax casting. A Renaissance sculptor could walk in here, understand the process and start working."

Musing away, he takes things back a few centuries earlier. "The foundry tradition grew out of the itinerant bronzesmiths of the High Christian period," he says, "but even in the early bronze age it's reckoned many artifacts may have been made by itinerant bronzesmiths."

CAST is based in the Liberties in what in 1850 was a tannery, and provides a total sculpture service to artists and commissioning bodies.

The fine art works cast by the company are seen across the land and abroad and include the GPO's Cuchulainn, Leo Higgins' gilded bronze torch set in stone in Killarney Street, Dublin 1, which commemorates those who've died because of drug abuse, medallions for the Air Corps and the monumental John Behan sculpture for the UN grounds in New York.

The company started when Brennan and Higgins came together and agreed the need for a new foundry in Dublin. Sculptors both of them, there's a synchronicity about their lives and partnership which boded well for CAST from the beginning.

Leo Higgins grew up in Finglas and at 15 was apprenticed as a bronze moulder to Daniel Millers foundry works in Church Street. "I've been working at it for 37 years now and conditions were Dickensian when I began. Apprentices came in a half hour before the tradesmen to light the fires and get things ready. They stayed later too.

"The work involved industrial moulding for distillers, ecclesiastical casting, railways for CIÉ. Towards the end of my time I developed a liking for the ecclesiastical end of things. It meant I could meet people face-to-face, artists like Oisín Kelly and Imogen Stuart. My horizons widened and I became completely interested in the art side of things."

It was 1967-1968 and he talks of the great changes in Ireland at the time, how metal working skills were "coming into their own, there was more money around, churches were being revamped, architecture was changing and different skills coming to be appreciated. It was an exciting time to be involved in metal work."

It was a natural enough move for him to join artist John Behan in the newly formed Dublin Art Foundry in 1970. "I worked there for 14 years. John Behan had left by then and set up successfully on his own in Galway. In 1986 I decided to have a go myself, went into partnership with Colm to set up CAST and here we are today, alive and kicking. We'll go on, too, I'll have to be carried out of here. No other way I'd leave."

Colm Brennan fills in his side of the story - as well as the gaps which round the circle. A Mayoman born in Belmullet in 1943, his grandfather was "a rudimentary stonemason and I was happiest as a kid in the local forge. I very often didn't get home from school until after the forge closed - it was a kindergarten of fiery form.

"I met Leo about 30 years ago when I needed a piece of sculpture cast. I'd been working in stone and wood before that and was excited at seeing the foundry and all that could be done there.

Years later we saw the need for a new foundry and CAST was born. The name's an anagram for Crucible Art Services and Technology - coming up with that was painful and kept me awake at night. We're so well-known now the anagram's forgotten and doesn't matter anyway."

Everything else does, however, in particular "a pour". We watch in the cold air as molten bronze leaves the furnace in a crucible and is poured, orangey gold, into ceramic shell moulds. It's medieval, as Brennan has said, and it's exciting.

On a quick walkabout he remarks that foundries have been compared to a cross between a bakery and building site.

CAST began life in the yard of the Daniel Miller foundry works in Church Street - where Leo Higgins had served his apprenticeship. "A lovely link," Colm Brennan says.

"We were there for about six years; we cast the Anna Livia figure for O'Connell Street there. Then we moved here, to our own purpose- built place. There were three of us then; David Dunne was with us in the beginning and still is. The company now employs 12 people ranging from metal finishers to mould makers, wax workers and patinators."

CAST was well-established by the time it moved to South Brown Street, to an area Colm Brennan says "was originally an industrial estate, home to silk and wool weavers as well as a tannery in this particular premises. Right now, across the road, they're excavating an early mill."

The burgeoning company was helped by what he says was "a general acceptance of sculpture that was a result of travel, a sense that it was a natural adjunct of streetscapes and landscapes.

There was also the great work being done by the Sculptors' Society of Ireland and the Artists' Association. Nowadays, almost any public building scheme will have a percentage spending for the arts.

"A piece of sculpture can be a pleasant punctuation along a road, can re-establish a landmark and give a human measure to things. That's partly what public sculpture is about. I'd hate to see a piece of sculpture in sterile isolation. I believe the tactile aspect gives it a life in the community and reminds us of our humanity."

In this context he talks about Leo Higgins' sculpture in Killarney Street and how "it functions as sculpture has functioned for years - a focus for the community, almost a place of pilgrimage. A very important place for families."

He talks, too, about how the company has grown in tandem with "a stability and growth in the artistic community in Ireland. The big change over the years has been that visual artists who go abroad come back. It used be that they'd become disillusioned here and stay away. Things have broadened out in every sense - in the last few days we've had enquiries from Belfast and Paris."

Leo Higgins' work can be seen in the RHA and Solomon Galleries. Colm Brennan's work can be seen in public places like the reception area in RTÉ's television building and, in Belfield, his Rotations Space 2. He also shows in Kellys of Rosslare.