Freshmade Prints 9-Foot Replica of Famed Italian Statue

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Freshmade 3D, a portfolio company at the Youngstown Business Incubator, has partnered with Kent State University to create a replica of a statue said to have served as inspiration for the Statue of Liberty.

Made with Freshmade’s proprietary AMClad material, the 80% scale model of Pio Fedi’s “Liberty of Poetry” statue at Opera di Santa Croce in Florence, Italy, is featured in an exhibit at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration.

“What we wanted to do with the Santa Croce team was to think about how we could bring the conversation into today’s culture,” said J.R. Campbell, director of Kent State’s Design Innovation Initiative, in a statement. “We think about the 50th commemoration of May 4 and the lead up to the presidential election. How do we take this historical understanding of liberty and this partnership between Italy and the U.S. to create an international conversation about liberty today?”

The original “Liberty of Poetry” is a memorial to playwright Giovanni Battista Niccolini, who played a major role in the Risorgimento, an ideological and cultural movement that helped spur the unification of Italian city-states in the 19th century. 

Kent State provided a 3D scan of the statue, which Freshmade then divided into sections and their supporting structures. The parts were printed at Humtown Products.

“We couldn’t think of a better opportunity to showcase the capabilities of AMClad® technology for creative applications,” said Freshmade co-founder and CEO Rich Wetzel. “We’re hoping this will inspire other universities and institutions to take advantage of 3D printing and complementary technologies like 3D scanning to preserve historic monuments and artifacts.”

The statue is the third such project Freshmade has tackled. In 2016, the company made two life-size bobbleheads of presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for the first application of Freshmade’s AMClad material.

Pictured: Freshmade 3D used its AMClad material to create an 80% scale replica (right) of the “Liberty of Poetry” statue (left) at the Opera di Santa Croce in Florence, Italy.

Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.