Weirong abstract 2007
A study of sand-cast technology on ancient Chinese coins: Zhou Weirong, China Numismatic Museum, Beijing
Not many scholars, by now, researched the history of sand-cast technology in China. According to some historical documents and unearthed remains, some people on the history of metallurgy believe that sand-cast, at the latest, had been applied by the Song Dynasty (960--1279); some people on numismatics believe that sand-cast had been possibly used to cast coins in the Tang Dynasty (618-907); some western scholars believe that sand-cast technology was introduced from China into Europe about in eleventh century.
Based on the systematical researches of the history of coin-cast technologies in ancient China, I believe that sand-cast was a great invention of the ancient Chinese coinage industry. This technology was invited as a new technique to cast more and more coinage issues, improve the efficiency and decrease the cost of the manufacture of coinage issues (As the development of social economy, China needed more and more coinage issues; in the Tang Dynasty three hundred million coins were cast for one year.).
However, it’s difficult that we pursue the technical origin of sand-cast, because there are few remains of early sand-cast activities. According to our research results of coin-cast technologies and the technical surroundings of ancient China, it’s out of question that the sand-cast techniques in China grew out of Chinese coinage industry, especially from the folk coin-cast workshop.
"back to Vienna programme":http://www.icomon.org.uk/meetings/31/vienna-programme