Propagation Project: Windy Leaf

The assemblage of cast and forged metal strips in mild steel and silver to create aggregated spiny vessels and sculptures is central to the practice of the contemporary craftsperson Junko Mori. Trained as a blacksmith in Tokyo, she draws on her Japanese cultural heritage and the traditions of her adopted country of Britain to create original forms using repetitive and painstaking metalwork processes. Propagation Project: Windy Leaf demonstrates Mori’s signature style: its lightness of form belies its sheer weight in steel, reflecting her ability to manipulate this unyielding material.

Core to her work is the close investigation of the natural world through the use of a microscope. Since childhood Mori has been interested in the minute details of plants and tree matter – their repetitive patterns and cell mutation – and, ultimately, the uncontrolled beauty of the natural world. From her home in remote North Wales, she is surrounded by the natural world and from there she creates welded-steel and silver works of art.

Rebecca Evans, Curator of Decorative Arts & Design