6 minute read
Light and fading: the only real clock
Photodegradation is the single mechanism that ages a made flower, and you can avoid it entirely.
Read itConservation
What actually degrades a made flower
A handmade flower has no biological clock, so everything that happens to it over the years is environmental. That makes its ageing genuinely predictable, which is unusual and useful.
Only one of the common threats does meaningful damage in a home. The rest are either negligible or badly misunderstood, and several pieces of widely repeated care advice make things worse.
These articles cover the actual chemistry of fading, what humidity does and doesn't do to a wire core, and why repair is a discipline rather than an admission of failure.
In this section
5 minute read
Humidity, oxidation, and the wire you cannot see
Colombo is humid all year round. Here's what that actually does to a wire core, and what it doesn't.
Read it5 minute read
Repair as a discipline, not an admission
Crafts that make durable objects tend to develop a way of mending them. This studio arrived at one the way everybody does, by having to.
Read itElsewhere in the guide
Technique
There are three moves: the loop, the bind and the wrap. Here's what the hands are doing, and why each step is done the way it is.
Materials
Wire remembers, fibre catches light, and the cheapest component in the room decides almost everything about the finished piece.
Form and symmetry
Five-fold symmetry, the vesica, and how to read a real flower well enough to build one that isn't a cartoon of it.
Traditions
People have made flowers from paper, silk, wax and wire for a very long time, and almost always for the same reason.