Chanel were showing-off their Spring/Summer collection earlier this week in Paris. It all took place in a constructed conservatory housing a magical cardboard garden around which the catwalk flowed. Models artfully paraded Karl Lagerfeld’s wares, themselves often dressed in floral inspired designs. If that wasn’t enough, at one point a model appeared trailed by large, …
A photogram is a cameraless image made by placing objects on or in front of light-sensitive material which is then exposed to a light source. A botanical photogram is where your subject is a plant. We take a chronological look at artworks created by great practitioners of the technique past and present. William Henry Fox …
When I was younger, I always had my Pentax camera (with zoom lens) around my neck. I took many many pictures of just about everything. What caught my eye was the pattern of Fritillaria, the chocolate lily. Delicate flowers, a simple two flower vase arrangement, were magic to me. Soft and slightly out of focus. …
What do these forests make you feel? Their weight and density, their crowded orderliness. There is scarcely room for another tree and yet there is space around each. They are profoundly solemn yet upliftingly joyous. You can find strength in them that you look for, showing how absolutely full of truth, how full of reality. …
Last Friday was the 1869 collection of illustrations from The Florist And Pomologist: A Pictorial Monthly Magazine Of Flowers, Fruits, And General Horticulture, today we give you more free botanical art from the 1873 collection. Published by the Journal of Horticulture, London and digitised by the Biodiversity Heritage Library, these works are in the Public Domain. We include 14 intensely coloured …
Bangkok based illustrator and artist Suthipa Kamyam depicts elements of the natural world in great detail, letting form and shape dictate her vision. She brings intensity and density to trees, movement and mellifluousness to flowers and foliage; capturing the living, breathing, often hidden, energy of it all. Her reduced colour palette and whimsical names add even more emotion to …
Celia Birtwell has been immortalised by David Hockney in his painting Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1970-71), a painting cherished here mostly for the blue vase full of lilies resting on the table. Birtwell’s appearance in this famous painting is by no means her most significant achievement, being a successful and lauded fabric designer in her own …
If you ever visit the Maltese islands, you may be surprised by the sheer quantity of alien plants covering this small country – with Prickly Pear, Opuntia ficus-indica, one of the most invasive. Yet the problem with an alien is, they can be just so darn exotic, and spell-bounding, hence the need to photograph them at every turn. This Agave ‘egg’ above a …
Do you find yourself generally inspired or fascinated by one particular group of plants? Haven’t yet come across another person with your particular vegetative persuasions? Want to find like minded people to share information and plants with? If the answer is yes to any of the above, you may want to think about joining a plant …
If anyone is visiting the Canaries for some winter sun, then look out for the outlandish plant Dracaena draco, a.k.a Dragon tree or just Drago. A native of Macronesia and Morocco, it’s very exciting to see a mature specimen in the wild, rather than how we might usually see it here, growing as a house …