“Bronze & Silver Flora”

Each of these small bronze pots contains a tiny sterling silver flower or plant, or in one case, a couple of little toadstools. These were real plants, transformed into silver by using the “lost plant” method of casting!
The flower is put into a cylinder, a refractory casting mixture poured in around it and a vacuum introduced to extract all the air. The cylinder is then cured in a kiln for 5 hours or so, burning out the plant material in the process, to leave a hollow mould into which the silver is poured.
This is just like the lost wax method for bronze casting but in this case, we call it the “lost plant” system.

These pieces are between 60mm and 120mm tall and weigh almost nothing!!

The price for these little bronzes: ZAR 3,000 each