Ashleaf Archives (2015 - 2020)

During these 5 years, whilst working alongside the Crucible Foundry in SW London, my art practice was exclusively focusing on art projects with leaves using the medium of bronze - telling stories with bronze leaves.

We capture the fragility of leaves in bronze to the finest detail. Each leaf is utterly unique and so are our bronze castings of them, preserving three essential qualities of leaves: their texture, contour and shape. The original leaf disappears in the process and is preserved in bronze. Our leaf sculptures allow a different appreciation of leaves, a new dimension of tactility appears that complements the already existing qualities.

When leaves emerge in bronze after casting, like a phoenix reborn from its ashes, what was fragile in leaf becomes robust in bronze. The form lives on in a different substance - a transformation from transience to permanence.

Each bronze leaf is an entirely unique life casting of nature made by Ashleaf, the small London-based art practice Hanna co-founded and was actively and collaboratively working in at the time these sculptures were created.

With an emphasis on preserving the ephemeral, we explore and record life through leaves. We give prominence to the details of fragments and their relationship to the whole. We consider each leaf in itself complete, bearing witness to a specific time, location and the natural forces it was shaped by.

Folk + Field magazine interview feature in print (May, 2020)

100 Leaves Project (2019)

Windy Hollow Tea Leaves (2019)

A unique casting in solid bronze of a collection of 38 tea leaves that were collected at Windy Hollow Farm in Perthshire, Scotland in the summer of 2019.

Hanna was invited by Monica to visit Windy Hollow in the summer of 2019 and stayed there on a week-long pilot art residency to work with the tea leaves growing there. She then took the leaves back with her to London to the Crucible Foundry where they were cast in bronze using the traditional lost-wax casting technique. Each organic leaf disappeared in the process, however, their unique details and character were captured in bronze for a thousand year or more.

Back in 2019 Monica organised a mini-tour to tea houses across the UK and Europe. Hanna accompanied her to Edinburgh and London. Monica also went to Madrid at the beginning of 2020 to show these leaves to some tea lovers alongside a tea tasting event there.

Creative Countryside collection (2018)

The Creative Countryside collection consists of 16 pieces. These sixteen leaves are entirely unique castings of real organic leaves collected by sixteen different people in rural Shropshire on the 18th of November 2018 during a seasonal gathering called the Creative Countryside Autumn Retreat where Hanna was hosting a leaf art workshop. There are many different species of leaves in this collection - amongst them are oak, hawthorn, cherry, elm, hornbeam, ivy, poplar, maple, smoke bush and nettle.

The real leaves were cast in bronze by Ashleaf, the small London-based art practice Hanna co-founded and was actively and collaboratively working in at the time these sculptures came into being. The bronze casting for Ashleaf was done at the Crucible Foundry in London using the traditional lost wax bronze casting technique.

The leaves preserved the delicate details of the leaf texture on one side while the other side reveals brush marks in wax that bear witness to the how they were each captured as a sculpture in this material. It is finished with a makers mark stamped in the wax on the reverse.

These bronze leaves are offered without patination. They raw bronze surface will age beautifully over time. Please note, each piece is sold as seen. It may have imperfections in the condition as the leaf was found. Please check photos for more details.

Article feature in botanical art print publication of INKQ Issue #2 (2018)

What Remains (2017) Sycamore leaves

Cherry Variations (2017)

Leaves caught in the moment of fall
- on their way returning to the earth.

‘In music, variation is a formal technique where material is repeated in an altered form. The changes may evolve melody, rythm, harmony, counterpoint, timbre, orchestration, or any combination of these.’
Similarly, the cherry leaves captured in this collection present an infinite variation within a certain leaf pattern in diverse shape and size. In the dialogue between the leaves, the curves often reminded us of music with their dynamic form that creates rythm and repetition of forms in variations. The curves preserved in these bronze leaf sculptures can exist in a number of combinations put together as pairs.
The audience was invited to interact with this installation by handling the leaves and placing them back on the table where they see them fit best. This installation continuously evolved and changed shape throughout the exhibition.

More about the Cherry Variations collection:

This collection has travelled to various exhibitions and galleries over the past 7 years. They were first exhibited at our Open Studio at the Crucible Foundry in 2017, followed by a phenomenal group show as a guest artist exhibiting with The Arborealists at the Black Swan Arts in Frome, Somerset in 2018 and then in 2019 at ‘Plantea’ they were displayed alongside 400 other exquisite botanical artworks by the Society of Botanical Artists at the Mall Galleries, near Trafalgar Square, London. They were last on show with Author Interiors in Scotland who has been stocking the remaining 50 or so pieces from the original 89 original leaves in this collection.