Inspired by the shape of a piece of flint, Moore created a maquette for the sculpture in plaster which was cast in an edition of small bronzes, some 15 centimetres (6 inches) long.

One cast was exhibited in a major retrospective of his work at the Forte di Belvedere in Florence in 1972, later described by Moore as the pinnacle of his career.

The artist's cast (0/6) was stolen from the Henry Moore Foundation at Perry Green, Hertfordshire on 15 December 2005.

It is believed to have been hoisted onto the back of a stolen flatbed Mercedes lorry using a crane, cut up for scrap the same night, and shipped to Rotterdam, and then probably to the Far East.

The theft inspired German artist Fritz Balthaus in 2009 to cast bronze ingots of equivalent weight which, arranged in a form approximating Moore's sculpture, are displayed as Pure Moore at the Federal Criminal Police Office in Berlin.