A Living Legacy

Cape Town sculptor Nic Bladen casts indigenous botanicals into bronze and silver, creating extraordinary artworks he hopes will last as fossils into the future

- Tudor Caradoc-Davies

Somehow the orchid fraternity got hold of me,’ smiles sculptor Nic Bladen. It may sound like a plot twist in a floral conspiracy novel, but this was perhaps the turning point in his career. While making a living creating jewellery, he was asked by the president of the local orchid society to cast a few whole orchids in bronze.

A former dental technician, Bladen learned about bronze sculpture under the watchful eye of Otto du Plessis at Bronze Age before going out on his own. He’d been loping along when the orchid request came. ‘I cast a flower one day and that was it. Lightbulb moment.’

The orchid job successfully executed, the penny dropped about how beautiful organic-matter casting can be, and Bladen embarked on a botanical path that has taken him to where he is today, exhibiting in the Everard Read galleries in London and across South Africa, while operating from a workshop in a heritage building in Simon’s Town.

At street level in the quaint coastal village on the eastern side of the Cape Peninsula, the architecture, fish ’n chips shops and pubs are more reminiscent of Cornwall than of anything South African. But the similarities end where the town hits the adjoining fynbos-clad slopes: surrounded by the Cape fold mountains, the area is covered in indigenous flora, from proteas to buchu and thousands of other species in between. Some are common, many rare; this is Bladen’s foraging ground.