Collection: Tommy Mitchell

As a young boy, Tommy Mitchell helped out in the family garden. It wasn’t altruism, he quickly acknowledges; it was a requirement. Dad grew vegetables while Mom focused on flowers, and although Mitchell recalls a fascination with all of the natural forms sprouting up from the North Carolina dirt, he never imagined that familiarity with the curve of a watermelon vine would one day lead him to shape botanical objects that sprung from his own hands rather than the soil. Today, his refined metal plants—whether flowering or sans blooms, such as his interpretations of agaves, palms, and Brussels sprouts—are snapped up by arbiters of style including interior designer Bunny Williams, and sold in chic emporiums such as Bergdorf Goodman.

“I didn’t plan on becoming an artist,” Mitchell begins, “but my family was involved with the arts, and 20 years ago I found myself restoring pieces, using my hands with different mediums such as sculpture, paintings, and gilded objects. Soon I had my own art conservation business. One antiques dealer brought me these old European flowers—metal flowers broken into bits—and as I put them back together, I became intrigued. I wanted to create my own.” So create he now does, cutting waferthin sheets of brass, copper, and steel, and manipulating them to mimic the gentle bend of a leaf or the delicate curl of a flower petal. Once he captures the form, he adds paint to bring his plants to life, producing his own form of tole (gilded and painted metalware originally fashionable in the 18th century).