Matbronze Art Gallery & Foundry

This guide to Matbronze Art Gallery and Foundry in Nairobi follows Denis Mathews, a mechanical engineer who in 1987 found that Kenya had no foundry capable of casting his sculptures in bronze, so he built one himself, mixing his own silicone rubber molds and testing ceramic shells that could survive metal poured past a thousand degrees. It traces his first sculpture, an elephant he later called a little ropey, and the ancient lost wax method he taught himself on Kifaru Lane. Watch for the workbench where, decades on, he is still pressing warm wax by hand into shapes that do not exist yet.