Pensée

Pensée is, at first glance, an interpretation of nature; bronze flowers extend from a vase, set onto a single drawer. On closer inspection, the flowers have been hand-carved and cast using the lost wax process. Pansies, too large for their container, threaten to overtake the object, with one flora having pierced through the wood to the other side. There is a subtle movement of the flowers on their stems, tying the bronze forms back to the lightness of their natural state. Victorians used the gift of pansies as a subtle means to show one is being thought of; pensée meaning ‘to think’, describing the bowed head of petals.

Writer and Philologist J. R. R. Tolkien describes a secondary world, where what we see is true in accordance to the laws of that world. This illusion must be all consuming, or else we view the imaginary scene from the outside; the viewer must be transformed subtly, so they do not even notice they have entered the world presented to them. Opening the drawer one is confronted with the unruly pansy, flourishing in the dark. The stem impossible probes the wooden drawer, hinting at an alternate dimension, one where proportions and materiality are warped. I wish the viewer to be transport through opening the drawer. The ‘Oh!’, which may only last a second, is trying to intertwine the secondary world with the primary, something which is being lost in modern times.

 A small cherub has her arrow drawn, ready to turn and strike, hinting at Shakespeare’s “love-in-idleness”. The tale tells that pansies, originally white, were struck by cupid’s arrow, spreading a deep purple hue across the petals.

King Arthur used pansies divine the future; through plucking a petal and reading the lines, he would make decisions based on the patterns. The lines on these petals are permanent; the pansies defy their temporal nature. The keepsake box depicts the flora in a new way- the piece is unnaturally frozen in time. The flower heads droop in thought, motionless and unchanging in their prime bloom.