This is one of my favorite color palettes this season- and aren't those tree peonies amazing? Why does the description "vintage" come to mind? It's the color. Remember Bakelite plastic jewelry? That is plastic cast, chunky jewelry popular in the 30's and 40's. It still has a following these days. Sort of vintage meets modern. The distinctive colors were bright with a little white and maybe brown or black mixed in.
So much to experiment with in floral design and color has been one of the the most elusive and difficult aspects for me. Many designers work with variations of one color. It's a safer way to handle the whole color dilemma and a very effective one. My background as a painter asks for more.
People pictures rarely make an appearance in this journal. It's completely flower centric. And if people are reading this I pretend they are very far away in some abstract ether. I'm sort of writing to them, but mainly having a conversation in my head, only in Trebucet typeface in Font Size 12.
But in this case the people are as important as the beautiful flowers created this day.
These women are a dedicated lot in this yoga community. We have been getting together for years with our beloved teacher, Claire Colvin, who organized this.
We don't actually talk to each other very much, but are very comfortable being inches away from each others bodies to pull or push on this or that body part to experience the yoga poses more deeply. It's a wonderful intimacy that doesn't need words.
But today- today we ate cheese and played with flowers!
Top row: Iris, Kathleen, our teacher, Claire, Cathyrn,
Bottom row: Peggy, Kathy, Ruth, Stacy
Our teacher, Claire Colvin
Here's from the second new Workshop scheduled this Spring.
What I love the most is watching the evolution of people who come back and practice and grow. Second best is someone who is completely new and discovers that they could develop the ability to do this thing called floral design too.
It just takes practice and more and more practice, but it's easy to make a good start.
Here's some photos from the Handheld Bouquet Workshop using garden roses, herbs and other wild things.
So many beautiful bouquets!
Hiking through forested landscapes is one of my greatest pleasures on this planet. It's the inspiration for this workshop and prior post. Thank you ladies for joining the adventure. My apologies that the images seem a bit out of focus. I hope you got some good ones.
Why are people so enamored with
little lilliputian landscapes? We seem to revisit this floral amusement from time to time. Is it that we feel a hankering for a primal slice of something old and ancient, if not as threatening as Jurassic Park- at least filled with fairies and magic?
And how about those miniatures slices of woodland under glass, the terrarium? Their history
doesn't elicit thoughts of magic as much as rational thought, botany and science. A little more than 100 years ago Dr. Nathanial Bradshaw Ward, a physicist and
amateur botanist accidentally discovered plant life could live for a period of time in moisture of a sealed glass bottle. Ward
had a carpenter build a glazed glass house, the first Wardian Case. This
ultimate terrarium grew in popularity to house greens and orchids in
many a Victorian parlor, housing plants that survived ocean crossings from moist tropical jungles
in the era of great plant collecting expeditions.
I think the appeal lies in between magic and science. These slices of nature delight us and are somehow draw us in to observe and lose ourselves among leafy greenness for awhile. Perhaps that is why we revisit this botanical amusement from time to time through the years, configured for our current lifestyles and interiors.
Below is my homage to the fern and mosses and small spring flowers in this imaginary slice of woodland.
Yes, these old fashioned garden roses that look and smell like this person's dream rose. These were the roses I always yearned for on Valentine's Day. Never could understand why those red roses never opened despite all my efforts. I didn't know the Valentine Rose was another variety that was bred not to open. Dang! Why didn't someone tell me? All those hours at the sink re cutting and soaking.
It's a very long story, but is an interesting one indeed. I'll keep it short since I'm getting ready for Mother's Day and maybe you don't want all those geeky details. This info. comes from having done a lot of research and having given a few talks at Rose Societies.
Modern hybrid tea roses (related to that Valentine Rose) were created by crossing/ hybridizing a Chinese rose and European rose (in the most simplistic of explanations). After they were introduced to Europe, the old fashioned, scented, multi- petaled roses fell out of fashion in Europe.
David Austen was an English rose breeder who was a very significant link in the chain in the return of this type of rose to the garden and the floral designer. His first rose to have the feel of an old fashioned rose came out around 1960.
https://www.davidaustinroses.com/american/Advanced.asp?PageId=1906
Who provides a link to David? In my opinion it's Constance Spry, the woman he named his first rose after. Constance was a British floral designer to royalty. Yet she was every woman's Martha Stewart of her day, before she died in 1960. She was a designer, gardener, educator, and traveler and passionate about old fashioned garden roses. She collected rose cuttings or plants from Europe and the United States to be sure they were not lost and raised them in her extensive gardens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constance_Spry
Enough said!
You can find them and me at
Ponsford Bakery and Inovation Center this Saturday
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ponsfords-Place-Bakery-and-Innovation-Center/171195466244090
