Soliflore: Vase and Candle Holder
Soliflore: Vase and Candle Holder
Sumphat
The Bungamas is a Thai tradition stretching back centuries: a tree fashioned from gold and silver, presented as royal tribute and devotional offering. To give one was to make visible something the culture already understood - that an object shaped into a tree, offered with intention, carries meaning the living thing it resembles cannot.
Rush Pleansuk first encountered this tradition at Phra Sri Mahathat Temple Museum. He returned with a question rather than an answer, and the Soliflore is what came of it. A brass tree, 143 centimetres tall, its branches rising in the irregular rhythm of something that grew rather than was designed. Each branch holds a cup: one for a candle, one for a single stem.
The candle will melt. The flower will fade. The brass will remain, acquiring the particular colour that only time and handling produce. That progression - offering, impermanence, evidence - is the work.
Cast and embossed by hand in brass. Exclusive to Australia at The Leopard.
Couldn't load pickup availability
Information
Materials & Techniques: Brass molding branch structure, brass embossed flower elements
Measurements: Dimension 80 × 35 × Height 143 cm
About Sumphat
Rush Pleansuk trained as an architect in Thailand and France before turning to a different kind of construction. What he builds now is not buildings but continuity - the chain of knowledge between a tradition and its next practitioner, between a forgotten technique and a contemporary object that gives it reason to survive.
Through Sumphat, Pleansuk works with more than thirteen artisan communities across Thailand, translating endangered craft practices into objects for modern life. The method begins with research — into local narratives, material intelligence, ways of making that have not yet found their contemporary form. Then, collaboration. The result is not replication but renewal: something that carries history without being trapped by it.
Alongside him, French photographer Philippe Moisan - trained in ancient arts at the École du Louvre - brings a historian's eye to the work. His images translate the same sensibility: heritage as a living thing, not a relic.
Sumphat's work has been presented through Dior, Audemars Piguet, and Aman. It is exclusive to Australia at The Leopard.
