Tommy Mitchell Company
A Hillsborough, North Carolina studio making hand-cut, hand-painted metal flowers in the eighteenth-century tole tradition. Bunny Williams uses the pieces in her own interior-design commissions.
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Why Southern Crafted
Makers museums collect.
Work by some of our makers is held in places like the Smithsonian.
Made to last generations
Small-batch and handmade, for everyday use and then for handing down.
Made in the South
100% of the artisans we carry work here in the South.
Free shipping over $300
Easy exchanges, too. Fragile pieces like glass and art ship at cost.
He learned the craft by repairing it
Mitchell spent twenty years restoring antiques — gilding, finishing, the fussy work of bringing old things back. Then someone handed him a box of broken European tole flowers, painted metal blooms of the kind that have been made since the eighteenth century, and asked him to put them right. Rebuilding them taught him how they were built. Not long after, he started making his own.
Hand-cut and hand-painted brass, copper and steel
Not silk, not resin, not anything pressed out of a mold. Mitchell cuts wafer-thin copper, brass and steel by hand, hammers the detail into each petal, then finishes it in layered paint and gold leaf — veining included, one stroke at a time. It is jewelry-scale work done at the scale of a mantel, which is why the pieces read as sculpture rather than arrangement. And why no two leave the studio quite alike.
The designers got there first
Bunny Williams uses his pieces in her own commissions, and Charlotte Moss collaborated with him on a set of birth flowers, one for each month. Flower magazine called them permanent odes to beauty found in the garden. What they do in a room is quieter than any of that: they sit beside antiques without arguing, and they look like something collected rather than bought.
Tommy Mitchell
Tommy Mitchell spent twenty years restoring antiques — gilding, finishing, the patient work of bringing old things back — before anyone handed him a box of broken European tole flowers to repair. Rebuilding them taught him how they were made. He has been making his own in Hillsborough, North Carolina ever since.
The method is unchanged from the eighteenth century and it does not scale. Wafer-thin brass, copper and steel cut by hand, the detail hammered into each petal, then layered paint and gold leaf, veining included, one stroke at a time. Nothing is pressed from a mold, so no two leave the studio quite alike — which is why the pieces read as sculpture on a mantel rather than an arrangement.
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Our Retail Location
114 Bull Street
Savannah, GA
Monday, Thu-Sat: 10:00am - 5:00pm
Sunday: 12:00pm - 5:00pm
Closed Tuesday and Wednesday
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