Making a Leaf Décor Metal Wall Sculpture
Metal Leaf Wall Decor Sculpture IN CLAPHAM, LONDON
This commission gave me an amazing opportunity to work with talented high-end luxury Bernard interiors, on their luxury retirement village project, Audley Nightingale place in London. Metal leaf wall sculpture art (click to commission a piece like this) is becoming more and more popular, and you can see why: they add a unique and decorative feel to the room. As a sculpture artist, I love knowing my creative work is being used to help people feel happy in whatever way possible. Which is why providing artwork and commissions for different clients gives me such a buzz.
Finding Clients for my Metal Leaf Wall Sculptures
For a while now I have been set on aiming to market to high-end interior designers as I believe they would appreciate my work and know how to work them into their designs. At this point, I’ve been trying to sell my Ora Lighting range which consists of organic metal sculpture lamps, including floor lamps, table lamps, and pendants. For some reason I struggled to sell these works initially, my thoughts were because they are very unusual, and perhaps too much like statement pieces. Which may have been daunting to work out if it would suit people’s homes.
My second thought is perhaps these pieces hover on the line between being Sculpture and Design, with numerous failures pitching them to both interior shops, and galleries both saying the opposite - “We think it's more Sculpture...” and “oh it’s more design really”. I finally came to the resolution to get in touch with interior designers as I believe they would know how to place and use my pieces to decorate their rooms.
The reason for my Tangent is to explain why I aimed to attract Interior designers and how I got the commission to create a Luxury metal wall Sculpture. With my theory in place all I needed to do was find them and get seen by them, how do I do it? I initially researched and emailed a large array of interior designers’ images of my works, to no surprise I got no bites.
Another thought I had would be to approach them directly by visiting their offices in person and show them my portfolio of work. So I did some research and I put a list together of all the possible designers to visit and found Newcastle had a brilliant hub of Interior designers based there which included Bernard Interiors. Finding them was the easy part, the next required courage, and determination to knock on their doors and introduce yourself and show my work.
For those who know me best know from a young age when I get nervous I tend to mumble and speak fast, so obviously, I felt incredibly anxious about what to come. However I had a burning grit inside that outshone my nerves, I thought to myself I will never grow or make it this world without getting out of my comfort zone and going for it.
Why I’m glad I went for it
I visited and spoke to a broad range of interior designers and found great feedback and advice I never would have thought of. The more I visited the more confident and relaxed I became. By chance, my last visit of the day was Bernard interiors, which went well obviously, however, at the time I wasn’t too sure they were that interested. But after I left they sent me an email asking if I could possibly create a metal wall sculpture for their London Spa area project. Wow, what a brief and opportunity it was - I knew this could be a brilliant chance to show my talent and skills in the interior design world. With this belief I threw everything into this project, to claim this commission, by creating a variety of concepts with accompanying samples to show and crucially present them in a neat professional way.
Spoiler alert I got the commission woop! Woop! The brief asked for calming tranquil vibes, flowing decorative leaves mounted on the wall were their initial thoughts. However, I think it was a good idea to explore options and show my creativity, so I drew a variety of concepts to suit the theme. Here they are below.
They went for the initial idea of just leaves, involving 15 leaves composed in a way to create an essence of a gentle breeze blowing through. With the idea set, it was now time for the exciting yet daunting task of making them and mounting them on the walls.
Overcoming the Obstacles
I had some big concerns with this project, such as how am I going to mount these leaves to the wall neatly without showing any fixings. As the building was being built at the time, I wasn’t sure how it looked or what the wall was made from. With this in mind, I took the wise decision to go for a site visit and see the place for myself.
The site was in the hectic bustling area of Clapham in London so being a country village dweller, walking through such a busy build project was such a thrill and shock to the system. There were builders working flat out everywhere you looked, I had a hard hat and high vis vest on. I looked at the part but felt out of my depth. Yet I managed to remain calm and focus on the questions I needed answers to. For example “what was the wall made from and are there any services behind them?
I left with very helpful answers and bags of invaluable experience. For those interested, the walls are made of plasterboard, stud walls.
Sorting Out the Technicalities
The atmosphere was the next concern and not the arty vibe kind but the physical conditions due to being in a spa pool area the piece would be exposed to humid chlorine air. Which it needs to withstand, the only solution would be to use the strongest stainless steel possible, 316 grade. I will admit I was slightly apprehensive to use it as I’ve not worked with this material much before and wasn’t sure I could do my usual patinas and tricks to it. For the patina, they wanted my earthy black and brown tones I usually do to my mild steelworks. Applying this patina to stainless was a bit tricky to do, but it worked! Happy days!
Creating a Unique, yet Natural Look
With the boring technical parts sorted, it was time to have more fun and make the leaves. However, before I began, I was very conscious of each leaf being as unique and organic as it would in nature. To do this I set about cutting out a range of 4 different shapes of leaves from small to large, to more curved and distraught pieces. Then handcraft and shape each leaf in a spontaneous loose way to make every piece distinctly unique. It's a lot of extra effort but details like these and going that extra mile I think will really make a difference to the overall look. Once laid out and positioned correctly I believed they would capture a realistic essence of leaves blowing in the wind.
One plus I found with having differing shapes was it kept it interesting, as you can imagine being asked to replicate 15 of anything can make you a bit apprehensive to start, but mixing it up made it very pleasurable. After making a few leaves, I sent some images to the designers to check and were so pleased that they decided they wanted some more making for their reception area, with the only change being to make them smaller. I said yes, of course, I felt very humbled they liked the progress, this gave me a brunch of confidence that they would like the final outcome so I ploughed on.
When COVID Struck
While making these leaves we were hit with the gloomy Mister COVID, so this put a hold on the deadline for installation and sadly for my payment as I agreed on full payment on completion and install. It was a testing few months for us all, I had no other work to come in so it was a struggle to keep going. Thankfully in the summer things started to open up and you could travel for work, so I could finally come and install the pieces. I headed down south with all my gear and the pieces, full of nerves. I arrived 3 hours later at a very different building to my last visit, it looked so pristine and luxurious. I meet up with two of the designers who are there to oversee all the finishing touches, Furnishes, etc. To which I was extremely grateful they were here as they were so helpful, and kindly helped mark out where the piece will be going and where any furniture would be to avoid. As we don’t want any pieces in any precarious areas.
Setting up the Layout
To get my composition spot on before coming I laid out cut-out paper templates of the leaves on my garage floor to get an idea of the composition. This turned out to be a very helpful trick, so I opted for a similar approach on site. I stuck the templates to the wall to get an idea for the composition. After matching it up with the design I did on my garage floor I knew it needed tweaking slightly, because the space was so large I opened the gaps a little to look less bunched up. Not too much though as I think it would look like it's trying to cover up space and not be the focal point. I think this layout has the perfect balance and flow.
The Finishing Touches
With that sorted it was a simple matter of drilling, plugging, screwing, and slotting the pieces on easy peasy!
To be fair it was a fairly simple job to do but when I was there I couldn’t help feel the pressure to not make any mistakes on that pristine white wall. After getting the first few leaves fixed to the wall,I finally started to relax a bit and have confidence in my method of fixing works. By the time I took on the smaller versions in the reception area, I was actually starting to enjoy it and feel like a professional.
What a relief there on and looks great but do the designers like it was my initial thought. I nervously called them over to see and they loved it and even showed it to the boss and said it was a perfect showpiece. I’ll take that comment, which was lovely to hear, hearing that made me feel like I’d ticked all the boxes and done everything I could to showcase my talents and work.
A few weeks later the interior designers finished up the final touches and sent me these in situ images below. Which look epic I think you would agree.
To sum up, this project has been such an experience, I’ve learned so much from working with such talented interior designers. I’ve gained so much confidence in my abilities and believe I can do more of this in the future. As for finishing, I believe I stepped up to the mark of being in the luxury industry. I’ve dabbled my toes into this pool and I like it very much, it feels so much more liberating and exciting to be in. Here's to many more big luxury commissions in the future.