The new art of flower design [antikvár]

IntroductionFlowers give life and freshness to a room. Add a few blooms, place them where they will catch the early morning sunshine or the glow of soft lamplight, and a room immediately takes on an air of life and conviviality. There is no need to make stiff or elaborate arrangements, or to follow a set of rigid rules. Relax, enjoy using plant material and let your imagination have free rein, taking care beyond the 'florist bunch-to-vase' mentality.The New Ai~t of Flower Design is a guide to making individual arrangements that match both your mood of the moment and the season of the year. It shows how to get the most out of flowers by handling them sympatheticallyplaying with them evenso that they work like coloured pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, slotting into place within each arrangement and within the room setting you select.Creating new flower designs can be as simple or as complex as you choose to make it. The arrangements that were made for this book vary in scale. There are minimalist arrangements, using single blooms, and extravagant floral 'fantasies', intended for special occasions such as weddings. Between these extremes is a huge range of shape and form, including highly sculptured effects, surreal new flower 'species' made by using foliage and flowers from different plants, and the exotic combination of wild and cultivated material.In every flower design, the elements of light and colour are vital to both the contrast and the harmony of the finished effect. Colour comes, of course, from the plant material itself, but also from the arrangement's container and the roomscape in which it is placed. Learning to use colour in flower arrangements as an artist uses his palette is critical to the making of a design statement. Lightdirect and reflected, natural or artificialhas much to do with the final effect of an arrangement and can be manipulated, if artificial, to change an arrangement's emphasis. A stark twiggy design, strongly uplit, creates a gladelike pattern of shadows in a room, for example, while a strong downlight makes the design the room's focal point.Flower design is an intensely practical and enjoyable activity, so to make the information in these pages as accessible and as useful as possible, the book takes you on a room-by-room tour of the home, showing how each has unique design needs, and how a design or colour theme can be carried through the whole interior scene. In the hallway, for example, flowers should say 'welcome', while in the living room they should interact with the colours, textures and mood of your decorations and possessions. In the dining room, flowers can act not only as elements in a design but also as a bond between the guests at your table. The mirrored and other reflective surfaces of the bathroom are ideal for creating amusing visual effects with flowers and foliage. Flowers in the kitchen, especially if they are those of herbs to be used in cooking, can be both practical and decorative at the same time. The ideas are infiniteall you need to do is to dream them up with the help this book provides.Take your inspiration for flower designs from everything plant-related that you see around you, whether exotic or everyday. Picture postcards, photographs of flowers and gardens, wallpaper, fabrics and china designs are all good sources. So, too, are museums and galleries, which show how past masters have interpreted flower designs in still-life paintings.With the help of many friends and colleagues, and especially Graeme Roberts, I have had enormous pleasure in creating this book. I hope you will have just as much fun creating your own flower designs.Der>'ck HealeyTo my mother, Irene Healey: lo Betty Roberts; and to Aimt)! Ve Hulett who has shared with itsfrom childhood one of the most beautifid gardens.