The Marlborough Foundry, owned and operated by four generations of the Nye
family, has produced custom-made aluminum objects since 1953. The workers
half-jokingly describe their job as "the world's second oldest profession" --
only slight hyperbole as metal objects were first cast in Mesopotamia, Egypt,
China, Thailand, and India over 5,000 years ago. Many were functional
(weapons, plows, pots) but interestingly, the oldest known object is a copper
frog cast in Mesopotamia in 3,200 BCE.
In 2014, I spent ten weeks photographing the workers and their environment
-- the skill, pride, focus and hard work; the dust and steam
illuminated by the morning light; the molten aluminum flowing like a demon into
molds that resemble medieval torture devices; the gloves that have permanently
assumed the shape of the owner's hands; the tools and materials that looked the
same 100 years ago and will look the same 100 years from now.
