Join botanical casting artist and expert Caroline Wright for the day at Brantwood. Spend the morning learning how to make botanical plaster casts with a selection of flowers and foliage provided by Caroline, some of which she will have collected from the gardens at Brantwood. You will preserve their beauty, structures and delicate patterning in plaster casts to enjoy forever. Each person will take home a 7” square and a 7” round cast. All materials and aprons provided.  (Although aprons are provided, working with clay and plaster can be messy so it’s best to wear something that might get dirty).

The day includes refreshments and lunch in Brantwood’s Terrace Café.

• 10am –                 arrival, tea/coffee and introduction
• 10.30am –          demonstration and casting
• 1pm –                   lunch (while the casts dry)
• 2-2.30pm          a walk round the Brantwood gardens
• 2.30-3.30pm – remove the casts from their moulds and finish them off

£130pp

Caroline Wright

I started making botanical casts in 2020 and in 2021 began to sell them. Walking and gardening are so important to me and casting enables me to preserve the natural beauty of plants enabling the form and structure of all the different parts to be really seen and appreciated – details that might not otherwise be noticed. It’s easy to miss the intricate underside of a leaf or the delicate patterning found on some petals. These details are picked up by the clay into which the flowers or foliage are pressed to create a mould for the plaster from which the cast is made. My work is mainly with single specimens, focussed on their individuality, but I also work with different plants together, pretty garden annuals for example or meadow grasses that look as though they’re moving in the wind.

 Brantwood has always been one of my favourite places to visit. The house and gardens are beautiful, not to mention the view. I was absolutely thrilled when a couple of years ago I was asked to supply some of my work to be sold in the shop. Since then I have visited Brantwood on a regular basis to collect flowers and foliage to make casts for the Brantwood shop, and now I’m really excited to be running this course.