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A Look At How The Oscar Statuette Is Made & Fun Academy Awards Facts.

How The Oscar Statuette Is Made

In honor of tonight’s 85th Annual Academy Awards, here’s a reprise of a post that looks at how the coveted statuette is actually made, from start to finish.

How The Oscar Statuette Is Made

How The Oscar Statuette Is Made

Update: Oscar Statuettes are no longer made this way. This is the ‘old-fashioned way’, now they are 3D Printed (see here).

making oscar statuettes

The exterior of R.S. Owens in Chicago:
RS Owens

Casting, Buffing and polishing:
casting oscar statuettes

casting the statuette

The metal is heated to 960 degrees before pouring into the cast.
liquid metal

The Oscar, removed from the cast, and ready to be polished and buffed:
making the oscar statuette

The rough seams are sanded:
sanding

And the statue is polished:
polishing the oscar statuette

making oscar statuettes

Electroplating:
electroplating

electroplating

Dipped into the nickel (the second step, it’s first dipped into copper):
nickel-plating

Dipped into the 24k plate, the fourth step (the third step is dipped into silver):
making oscar statuettes

gold-plating

making oscar statuettes the old way

Engraving and Mounting:
engraving oscars

Affixing the engraved plate to the base:

a close-up look at base:

Placing the felt pad on the base:

Oscar Fun Facts:

• The official name of the statuette is the Academy Award® of Merit

• Oscar is 13½ inches tall and weighs 8½ pounds

• The First Recipient was Emil Jannings, named Best Actor for his performances in “The Last Command” and “The Way of All Flesh” in 1929

• Number of Awards Presented to date as of 2011: 2,809 statuettes

oscars trivia

oscars history

• It was designed by Cedric Gibbons, chief art director at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and sculpted by Los Angeles artist George Stanley.

• The Oscar statuette depicts a knight holding a crusader’s sword, standing on a reel of film. The film reel features five spokes, signifying the five original branches of the Academy (actors, directors, producers, technicians and writers.)

• How Oscar received his nickname is not exactly clear.
The most popular story is that Margaret Herrick, an Academy librarian and eventual executive director, remarked that the statuette resembled her Uncle Oscar, and the Academy staff began to refer to it as Oscar. Although the nickname was used with increasing frequency during the late 1930s, the Academy didn’t officially use the name Oscar until 1939.

• The Oscar statuette hasn’t been altered since his molten birth, except when the design of the pedestal was made taller in 1945.

The 85th Oscars airs tonight at 7pm Eastern time and 4pm Pacific time