Nature's Angels:
Inspired by nature, created with love

Kilmichael porcelain artist Penny Sanford can take a pitcher filled with creamy, white chocolate-colored liquid and turn that liquid into a dainty, exquisite ornament depicting an angel emerging from a leaf or flower.

by Denise M. Cosper
photos by Harold Head

Inspired by the wildflowers and trees around her studio on the 1,424-acre family farm, Sanford's 10 limited edition Nature's Angels have become collector's items in Mississippi and around the Southeast. And there is such a demand for her pieces, including a new one commissioned for The Splendors of Versailles exhibit in Jackson, that she works all the time, sleeps about three hours each night, and lives on frozen pot pies.

"I had no idea how popular these ornaments would be," Sanford said. "When the idea for them first came to me, I was stunned. I was in my studio, working on majolica pieces, and it was almost like having a vision.

"All of a sudden, I knew I would create the angels in nature, which leaves I would use first, what I would call them, and how I would market them. I never doubted the idea would work, but I never thought they would be in such demand."

Sanford, who received her general science degree from Mississippi State in 1983, said she never really planned to be an artist. After leaving Mississippi State, she took a news director position with WKMX radio in Enterprise/Fort Rucker, Ala., covering news and meeting 11 deadlines every day.

"It was really not much different than now, sleeping two or three hours every night and then getting up to do it all over again," Sanford said. "Then in 1991, Daddy died and it was time to come home."

While in Alabama, Sanford tried her hand at sculpting majolica dinnerware, a type of lead or tin glazed earthenware that is fired, painted, and then fired again. She said when she couldn't afford to buy the pieces she liked, she decided to try to make them. When she moved back home to Hamer Hills, the family farm in Kilmichael, she sold a few pieces and was invited to join a showroom at the Dallas Market Center. Demand for her pieces was too great and she didn't want to sacrifice quality by changing her creation process. Then she had the idea for Nature's Angels.

"I have always loved to watch the storm come up, to see the trees bow and scrape in the wind," Sanford said. "Their fluidness seemed to point out a lesson. Trees are so strong, but they have the ability to bend and move. People have to do this to dodge the curveballs of life. Trees have always been my inspiration.

"When I see those trees move, I sometimes wonder whether it is the wind blowing or an angel going by. God's protection of us comes from the angels that are always around us. Trees to me are a reminder that God looks out for me."

When Sanford began her work on these porcelain angels, she said she didn't know where her new ideas might come from after she completed the first four that were part of her 'vision.' But as always, she drew her inspiration from nature.

She helped her uncle and her mother with restoration projects around the farm and found more flowers and trees to sculpt with her angels. When they began to re-establish the roses that grew on the farm for the more than six generations it has been in the family, she sculpted an angel blowing a kiss of fragrance onto the petals of a rose.

When they planted 125 trees to commemorate the 125th birthday of the farmhouse, she sculpted a smiling angel surrounded by delicate dogwood blossoms and the profile of an angel with gingko-leaf wings. When the farm celebrated its 160th birthday, the family planted 160 hardwood trees and the maple, oak, and sweet gum angels were born.

"My future holds porcelain and sculpting and carrying on the family farm tradition."

"I have always seen beauty in the Earth," Sanford said. "It's as if God created this wonderful Hallmark card for us to see every day as a moment-by-moment reminder of how special God thinks we are."

This year, she faced a new challenge-to create a signature ornament for The Splendors of Versailles, the five-month Jackson exhibit of art treasures from Versailles Palace. Sanford is the only Mississippi artist asked to create a work for the exhibition and the only American artist commissioned to make something to be sold in the gift shop of the exhibit.

The sculpture is based on the sunflowers carved on two giant urns that sit at Versailles. Louis XIV-the 'Sun King'-who built the palace, chose sunflowers as the emblem of his reign. Sanford's ornament features an angel similar to the sun god image that is the symbol of the exhibit.

"The sun god is a pagan symbol with the rays of the sun surrounding his face," Sanford said. "I modeled my angel after him, but made her softer and made her hair the rays. I wanted to interpret the sunflowers found on the urns because that symbol is so much a part of Versailles, but I also wanted the ornament to be one of my own."

All of Sanford's pieces are cast from molds made from her original sculptures. Her uncle, 1948 MSU graduate Charles Hamer, creates the original molds from sculptor's plaster, and he and Sanford's employees pour porcelain into the molds to create the ornament. Then, Sanford's mother, MSU College of Education professor emeritus Alice Hamer Sanford, and local artisans refine the detail in the ornaments. Sanford completes the sculpting process, making the exact details of each piece unique and then signing each.

"I want all of my pieces to be unique, to be collectors' items," Sanford said. "But refining each ornament takes time and I cannot do all the work myself. I have been known to redo an angel's face when I haven't liked how the mold came out. I spend time on each piece, but with 10,000 issues of some of the ornaments, I am grateful for all the help I get."

After the details are complete, the ornaments are fired to 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit and then polished. Each is assigned a number in the limited production. Sanford's first two ornaments had 5,000 issues while many of the others have 10,000. The Versailles Sunflower has 8,000.

Sanford says she is not certain what the future holds for her. She currently is trying to complete the commission for the exhibit and complete production on her two spring ornaments, the Native Iris and the Coreopsis. And she already has begun thinking about ornaments for the Christmas season.

"If I can ever find time to catch my breath, I want to start on my designs for the end of this year," Sanford said. "I won't reveal my secrets because I want all my pieces to be a surprise, but they definitely will come from some of the trees we are planting around the farm this spring. My future holds porcelain and sculpting and carrying on the family farm tradition. Just how God wants to use these things in the future, I'm not certain."