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Botanical Casting Workshop with Katy Eccles
Discover how the fleeting beauty of nature can be captured and preserved in plaster in this hands-on botanical casting workshop with artist Katy Eccles, founder of Imprint Casts.
Working with flowers and foliage, you'll explore Katy's distinctive casting process and learn how delicate botanical forms, textures and details can be transformed into beautiful plaster reliefs. A fascinating workshop combining nature, sculpture and casting, with plenty of inspiration to take back into your own creative practice and teaching.
Workshop Information
Date: Thursday 20th May 2027
Time: TBC
Location: Newcastle Upon Tyne
Venue: Sheffield Art Works
Price: £FREE
Suitable For: Secondary • FE • HE • Artists
Includes: All materials, lunch & refreshments
Availability: Limited places remaining
What to Expect
Katy will guide you through the casting process, from selecting and arranging botanical materials to creating impressions in clay and revealing the intricate details captured in plaster.
Along the way, you'll explore composition, texture and relief while discovering how Katy has developed and refined her own approach to this traditional process through years of experimentation.
During the workshop you will:
• Discover the process behind botanical plaster casting.
• Learn how flowers, leaves and other natural forms can be used to create detailed impressions in clay.
• Explore composition, texture, pattern and relief through natural materials.
• Learn directly from professional artist and founder of Imprint Casts, Katy Eccles.
• Gain practical insight into working with clay and plaster to create cast artwork.
• Discover connections between contemporary botanical casting and historic plasterwork.
• Explore ideas for adapting casting and relief techniques within your own creative practice and teaching.
• Create your own botanical plaster cast to take home.
• Enjoy a complimentary lunch, with time to relax, chat and connect with fellow art educators.
Meet the Artist
Katy Eccles
Botanical Artist • Plaster Caster • Founder of Imprint Casts
Katy Eccles is the artist behind Imprint Casts, creating intricate plaster artworks that capture the delicate impressions of flowers, foliage and natural objects and preserve them as permanent sculptural forms.
Working from her studio in the East Neuk of Fife, Katy's practice is rooted in a lifelong fascination with the natural world. Much of this inspiration can be traced back to her mother's remarkable garden in Fife, where an appreciation for plants, their structures and their changing forms became an important part of Katy's creative life.
Her background in Art History, specialising in 18th-century English art and architecture, also has a strong influence on her work. Drawing inspiration from classical sculpture, historic plasterwork, intaglios and architectural ornament, Katy brings these traditional references together with botanical forms to create work that feels both contemporary and connected to the past.
Largely self-taught as a caster, Katy has spent years experimenting with and refining her technique. Her process begins by carefully arranging fresh flowers and foliage before pressing them into smooth clay. Each stem, petal and seed is then painstakingly removed, leaving behind an impression which is cast in plaster to reveal the extraordinary detail of the original botanical material.
Today, Katy creates original artworks and bespoke commissions through Imprint Casts, including pieces preserving wedding bouquets and memorial flowers, as well as larger site-specific works for private clients, commercial projects and interior designers.
Her ongoing Botanical Grand Tour takes this fascination with nature even further. Inspired by the 18th-century tradition of collecting plaster intaglios while travelling, Katy is journeying through different landscapes across Britain, capturing local flora and fauna in plaster and creating a contemporary botanical record of place and season.
Through her work, something temporary becomes permanent, preserving the smallest details of the natural world and encouraging us to look more closely at the forms, textures and beauty that surround us.
When I am in the studio I can lean into a process which requires me to slow down, focus and make, not think.
— Katy Eccles
Some examples of Katy's work below
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