Lion-paw legs for a classic bathtub
A redesign of cast feet for a classic bathtub — from a hand-made sculpture to a metal prototype.
Brief
The classic bathtub stood on Italian-made metal lion-paw feet. The task was to design new feet, also to be manufactured in Italy, that keep the recognisable classic look while giving the product a character of its own.
Finding the form
A sculptor searched for the form by hand, in modelling clay. It is the easiest way to judge the plasticity, proportions and how light falls on the relief. We compared the options with the old feet until we found one that stays classic but looks new.
Fitting the form to the bathtub
We tried the chosen sculpture directly on the bathtub, refining the fit to the shape of the base, the height and the angle so the foot looks like one piece with the tub.
Engineering
We turned the sculpture into a CAD model and adapted it for milling and casting while keeping every detail of the relief.
Mock-ups and visualization
From the CAD model we made full-size mock-ups and checked how the feet look on the bathtub. In parallel we prepared photorealistic renders.
Prototyping
The final stage was a metal prototype: we made the pattern tooling, cast a sample and checked it on the bathtub.