Will my design be copied if I send it to a foundry?

The question is fair

Anyone who has sourced manufacturing overseas has either had this happen or knows someone who has. Sending a sculpture to a foundry means handing over the one thing that makes it yours: the form itself.

It is a live commercial fear, and most foundry websites do not address it at all. So here is a plain answer.

Where the risk actually comes from

The risk is not evenly spread across suppliers, and understanding why is more useful than any reassurance.

It rises with every workshop a design passes through.

Many foundries do not do everything themselves. The master pattern goes to a pattern maker. The silicone moulding goes to a mould shop. The finishing goes to a chasing workshop, or the patina to a specialist. Each of those is a separate business, with its own staff, its own storage and its own commercial pressures. None of them has an agreement with you. Most of the time you will never learn their names.

Each handover is a place where your form exists in a building you have never seen, in the hands of people you have never met, next to a mould rack you cannot inspect.

That is the actual mechanism. It is rarely a dramatic act of theft. It is usually a mould that stayed on a shelf after a job finished, in a workshop that has no relationship with you at all.

What we do

Everything happens in this building.

Design, master pattern, silicone mould, wax, ceramic shell, pour, chasing, welding, patina and packing, all under one roof, by people on our own payroll. There is no pattern maker down the road, no external mould shop and no finishing subcontractor.

This is why we can also photograph your piece at every stage, which is a useful side effect of the same fact: you can only document every stage if every stage is happening in one place.

The obvious objection

A foundry that will not name its clients is also a foundry with no portfolio, and you would be right to notice that this is convenient for us.

So here is the position stated plainly rather than hidden behind the principle. Confidentiality costs us the easiest marketing there is, and we accept that cost because the alternative is worse: a client list is a map of who commissioned what, and publishing it would make us exactly the kind of supplier this page is warning you about.

What we offer instead is the sort of evidence that does not require anyone else's permission:

• What has come out of the building. The largest work to leave this foundry stands seven metres, cast in sections and assembled. That describes the workshop without describing a client. See about.
• The whole process, documented. Photographs and video at every stage of your own piece, which is a far better test of a foundry than a photograph of somebody else's.
• Terms you can check before paying. Mould ownership, edition closure, staged payments and lead times are all published on this site rather than negotiated in private. See services and who owns the mould.
• A visit. By appointment, on a day when the stage you want to see is actually running.

If you would rather work with a foundry that publishes its client list, that is a completely reasonable preference and we will not try to talk you out of it.

What to ask any foundry

Not just us. These four questions are worth asking of every supplier you are considering, and the answers tell you more than any assurance.

1. Which stages happen in your own building, and which are subcontracted? The specific answer matters. "We manage the whole process" is not the same statement as "we perform the whole process".

2. Where are moulds stored, and who can access them? A mould store is a physical room. Ask about it.

3. What happens to my mould when the work is finished, or when the edition closes? Ownership and disposal should be written down before anything is made. Our position is on who owns the mould.

4. Will you put all of this in writing? A supplier who will is telling you something real. One who will not has also answered.

Non disclosure agreements

We sign them. Send yours with the enquiry so it can be reviewed before work begins rather than after a master pattern already exists.

An NDA is worth having, and it is worth being realistic about what it does. It gives you a remedy after the fact. It does not reduce the number of workshops your design passes through. Structure does that, and structure is why the previous section matters more than this one.

Photography and publication

Process photography that shows a client's form is the client's, not our portfolio material. We do not publish images of commissioned work without permission.

If you would prefer that nothing at all is photographed beyond what is sent to you, say so at the start and it will be recorded with the job.

Next

• Who owns the mould?
• About Deco Foundry
• Get a feasibility estimate