28/11/2025
It’s a lovely thing to see your work improve over the years. Behind the scenes here we are all artists and each prosthesis is agonised over by the maker and goes through the usual creative process “it looks good, hang on no I hate it!, oh actually no it’s good!” (If you are an artist you’ll know 😉). This process is amplified by the fact that sculpting this material is HARD, and 3mm too much or too little material can mean it won’t fit a shoe, could cause pressure or gait issues, or the person won’t like it. That and the fact that once you start to sculpt you only have a couple of days to work with the material before it starts to cure (no pressure!). Even with 3D technologies these prosthetics are still sculpted by hand and coloured by eye, often at a distance without ever seeing the actual patient in person. There is always some natural variation between iterations. It’s both a comfort and a distress to us as makers! We are always thinking of the person who will wear the prosthesis as we make it, their story, our hopes that what we make will help to make life easier or more complete. We sit with each limb for weeks and days, trying to incorporate changed anatomies and bring back symmetry. We can see a plaster cast of an amputation and know who it belongs to without seeing the name on it because we spend so long with each prosthesis, casting, smoothing, designing, creating. It becomes personal to all involved even though sometimes we never may meet the ones who wear our prostheses. The foot in the middle here is a new sculpt , the one on the right is an old version of the same prosthesis from years ago. Looking at this I can see how our techniques and skill improve each year. Thanks to all that choose to use us to make your prosthetics, not a day goes by where we aren’t thinking about how to make them better for you. ✨with love, Sophie and the PAT team
