Skip to content

New bronze sculpture to honour maritime heritage

David DixonCornwall
BBC Tom Leaper crouches in front of the artwork he has made. It features two bronze fishermen holding a fishing basket. Tom himself is an older man with short grey hair and glasses, and is wearing a blue T-shirt.BBC
The sculpture, seen here with sculptor Tom Leaper, weighs about 350kg (770lb)

A new sculpture paying tribute to the mariners of a seaside town has been lowered into place.

The bronze artwork, created by Tom Leaper and featuring two fishermen catching a haul of pilchards, was put in place at Smeaton's Pier in St Ives, Cornwall, on Tuesday.

Leaper, also known for his memorial to lost fishermen erected in Newlyn in 2007, said the latest work had taken four years to create and was mainly funded by selling 65 miniature versions of it.

Leaper's Newlyn project was also funded independently - on that occasion it was paid for by a group of working and retired people from the industry in the area.

A bronze statue of a fisherman looking out to sea . He holds a rope and wears a beanie type hat. St Michael's Mount is visible across the bay
The memorial to those lost at sea was erected in Newlyn in 2007

Of his new work, he said: "I was asked by the old boys down in St Ives after they saw the one in Newlyn, but they wanted this to be more of a celebration.

"I don't like applying for funding from arts bodies - they tend to have too many chiefs and make you fill out a lot of paperwork."

Tom stands next to his bronze sculpture inside the plinth where it will be mounted The plinth has a hole big enough for Tom to crawl into so the plinth can be bolted down
Tom has what he calls a "get in hole" in the plinth so it can be bolted to its base

Putting up a 350kg (770lb) sculpture that would last on a pier constantly lashed by wind and rain, as well as spray from the ocean, had presented several challenges, he said.

He said: "It has to stay up for decades and that's a problem if you're next to the sea.

"For example, the plinth has a stainless steel support structure, but that can't touch the bronze, so you have to place a gasket all around it to stop the two metals being affected by salt from the sea.

"Artistically speaking, this one's more angular that the one in Newlyn.

"I've taken inspiration from famous St Ives artists like Barbara Hepworth and Alfred Wallis, and the sculpture also features multitudinous pilchards.

"One day back in the 19th Century the town landed 61 million of the fish and, at that time, there wasn't a tourist in site, so it's also a reminder of the past."

Follow BBC Cornwall on X, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to spotlight@bbc.co.uk.