Fynbos is fire-dependent vegetation: it needs to burn around every 15 years to stimulate new growth.
Over millennia, fynbos plants have developed remarkable adaptations — some only release their seeds after the heat of a fire has cracked the hard seedcoat; others, like Protea cynaroides, the King Protea (our national flower), have a “lignotuber”, a thick and woody underground stem that produces new growth after a burn.
Sculptor, jeweller and metalsmith Nic Bladen uses fire — and bronze, silver and gold — to capture and document plants and flowers in a series of impossibly delicate botanical castings.
“A typical job — if I can call it that — involves finding a piece of land where I’m allowed to harvest,” Bladen says. “I always get permission from the land owner. And then I try to find a piece that depicts the landscape. Plants are all perfect sculptures. But I look at shape, characteristics — a flower, a dried shoot from last year, buds or seeds — and the plant’s complexity and castability.
I carefully extract the plant from the soil and, after photographing it, I literally cut the plant up into castable sizes, maybe 20cm long and 10cm wide. I recently did a plant that consisted of 60 separate moulds. In some instances I have to make spare parts — I take pieces from neighbouring plants to make up the parts I suspect will be difficult to cast.”
Once a specimen is cut up and marked, sections are placed into investment material (similar to plaster of Paris). Once set, the mould is fired in a kiln — Bladen has a portable set-up for long-distance field trips — for an average of 15 hours. “I take the kiln almost to 1 000 degrees and the flowers burn away completely; there’s hardly a trace of ash left.”
Outside the kiln, Bladen keeps little bottles with corresponding amounts of metal (for each mould). “I melt the metal in a crucible, then take the mould out of the kiln and place it on a vacuum chamber. I draw a vacuum through the porous investment material and, when I reach a full vacuum, I drop the molten metal in. The vacuum draws the metal into the cavity left by the plant. Sometimes I even manage to cast a single hair.”
Bladen’s magnificent Protea cynaroides was commissioned by the Table Mountain Fund for its annual fundraiser. “There are 1 470 plant species on Table Mountain alone,” Bladen says. “So maybe if I do 40 pieces a year, by the time I am 95 I will have covered the entire mountain. I’m not trying to sell this work. My impetus is that I would like a documentation of things that are disappearing. These are not trophies.”
For more information visit www.nicbladen.com