Original silver sculptures make
unique and unusual gifts

People who are looking for unique, unusual gifts might not consider sculpture initially, so I decided to silver-plate one of my smaller sculptures, Tiny Mother and Child as an experiment.

Adding the silver finish makes a small piece like this feel more significant, and that bit of sparkle turns it into less of a sculpture and more of a memento.

A silver wedding anniversary would be the perfect occasion to give one of these pieces.

The smaller sculptures are perfect, because it's so easy to find somewhere to display them. Of course, it would also be possible to plate a small piece with gold, for a super-special gift for a golden wedding anniversary!

To my eye, the silver finish makes the piece look lighter, and more precious - more of a gift. So far, clients seem to agree. One day, one of the galleries who deal in my work called to ask if I had any more of the Tiny Mother and Child edition available in the silver. They had a customer would only buy if I had enough for her to give one to each of her three daughters.

I was delighted to be able to say 'Yes', I did happen to have three just then!

More pieces to come
Silver-plating a piece is easy. The bronze is cast as normal and then the silver-plate is added by a specialist plater who normally works with jewellery. So far, I've only applied silver to Tiny Mother and Child, but I'm planning to plate the new piece, Sleeping Starfish, when it's ready.

If clients were looking for really unique and unusual gifts, they could choose to have any other small piece silver-plated as a one-off, although of course the larger the piece the more this would cost.

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More information about bronze sculptures as gifts

Go to Vanessa Pooley's home page.