Son of a coppersmith, Antoine Durenne (1822-1895) established an art foundry (today GHM) in Sommevoire in 1857 and succeeded in blending industry with art. Having graduated from the Beaux-Arts, he knew how to recognise the value of an artist and associated himself with several great 19th century sculptors such as Auguste Bartholdi, Emmanuel Frémiet, Ernest-Eugène Hiolle or Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, his main artist. The sculptor provided Durenne with numerous models for the serial edition. Among them, some twenty groups of children or female figures sculpted to decorate fountains or candelabras, such as “12 Enfants hydrophores” (1862).