about the artist

Kathryn Bondy is a botanical artist and the founder of Golden Age Botanicals.

She creates stunningly lifelike botanical keepsakes entirely by hand in her Toronto studio. With refined techniques developed over many years, every element is made in faithful realism, using a material that captures the essence of the example that nature provides. Crepe paper is often dyed by hand, wire is delicately shaped, and petals and leaves are sculpted and curved just-so, creating pieces that are rooted in beauty and offer a quiet study of nature's wonder.

Her work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and In Her Studio Magazine, in art galleries in Toronto and shops across Canada.

The story of Golden Age

Golden Age is an expression of the ways we use the natural world as a language of connection. We let nature speak for us when words seem to fail: we send flowers as a kindness, fruit becomes historical metaphor, insects are reminders of loved ones. These are our own stories about who we are, who we love, what we want to remember, and what matters to us. By adapting the languages of flowers, fruit, plants and insects, we can tell those stories in new ways, as an allegory about who we are and what we can become.

Golden Age pieces aim to capture the beauty of the natural world in fine detail, acting with deep devotion to the ongoing telling of your story — whatever it may be.

Golden Age acknowledges that this work is made on sacred land known as Tkaronto and traditionally as Turtle Island. It is home to the Haudenosaunee, the Huron-Wendat, the Anishinaabe, the Metis, the Chippewa and the Mississaugas of the New Credit. It is treaty land, including the Dish With One Spoon treaty.

Acknowledging the land is only a first step of many. As a settler I am responsible and accountable for the systemic violence and injustice faced by Black and Indigenous people. This is a work-in-progress to dismantle, and is reliant on the guidance and calls-to-action by BIPOC activists and justice seekers, The Truth and Reconciliation Act, and in conjunction with other allies.