THE Beddi-Makky Art Foundry, 227 India Street east of McGuinness Boulevard, is a bronze monument foundry established in Greenpoint in the 1940s when two immigrant Hungarian foundryworkers named Bedi and Rassi acquired the Kunst foundry in Manhattan’s Upper East Side and moved it to Greenpoint. Present owner Steve Makki, who fled Hungary during its Soviet domination, eventually bought out Messrs. Bedi and Rassi.
The present complex occupies three lots on India Street, including a residential building.
It is a strange place, a factory whose nooks and shelves hold statues of patriots, baboons, nymphs, rams, angels and dusty gods and goddesses. Some are monumental in scale, others are minute. Size is not a measure of artistic or historic value: The shop holds tiny gems such as the maquette-the original small model made by sculptor Paul Manship -for the Prometheus that hovers over the Rockefeller Center rink. [Newsday]
The foundry has produced several well-known monuments during its nearly 75-year history including the Iwo Jima Memorial in Arlington, VA.
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6/22/23