The guide
How wire and fibre become flowers.
This is about the craft, not the shop: what the hands do, why the material behaves as it does, and what ages a made flower.
Technique
Photography pending
Two hands closing a chenille stem into a single teardrop loop, the free end still uncurled.The loop: how a petal is formed
It's one operation, and you repeat it until your hands stop needing to think about it.
5 minute read
Photography pending
A bundle of finished stems gathered at the waist and wrapped in fine wire, no glue anywhere in the join.The bind: holding a bouquet together without glue
Twelve stems become one object through friction and geometry rather than adhesive.
6 minute read
Photography pending
A cut frangipani beside a half-built copy, laid on the bench at the same angle for comparison.Reading a real flower before you build one
Fifteen minutes of looking saves you an hour of making the wrong thing.
6 minute read
Materials
Photography pending
A single chenille stem in raking light, close enough to see the fibres standing off the twisted core.What a chenille stem actually is
It's two wires and a spiral of fibre, made by a process borrowed from the textile industry.
5 minute read
Photography pending
One stem bent to a right angle and released, holding the angle, next to a length of loose fibre lying flat.Why wire remembers, and fibre does not
This is the reason you can push a crushed petal back into shape with a fingertip.
5 minute read
Photography pending
The same green stem shot lit from behind and from the front, the pile catching light differently in each.Fibre, light, and why texture reads at three metres
This is why a handmade flower looks warm across a room while a plastic one looks flat.
5 minute read
Form and symmetry
Photography pending
Five finished petals arranged around a centre point, spaced evenly, seen from directly above.Five-fold symmetry, and why so many flowers use it
Roses, apple blossom, buttercups and hibiscus all repeat the same arrangement, and there's a reason for it.
6 minute read
Photography pending
Two overlapping circles drawn on paper with a finished petal set into the lens shape where they cross.The vesica: the shape almost every petal is hiding
Two overlapping circles produce the outline underneath most petals you'll ever draw.
5 minute read
Photography pending
A finished bouquet photographed against a plain ground so only its outline reads.Scale, silhouette, and why bouquets are built inside a sphere
The outline is what a person sees from the doorway, and everything inside it is detail.
5 minute read
Traditions
Photography pending
Made flowers of paper, silk and wire set side by side on a neutral cloth.Paper, silk, wax and wire: made flowers across cultures
The impulse to make a flower out of something that isn't a flower is old, widespread, and almost always religious in origin.
7 minute read
Photography pending
A tray of temple offerings at a shrine, araliya and lotus laid out on a low stone ledge.Flowers in Sri Lankan life
There's araliya at the temple, lotus at the shrine, and a calendar of offering that has nothing to do with decoration.
7 minute read
Photography pending
A pressed flower kept between the pages of an old book, the paper stained where it has lain.Why people preserve flowers at all
Pressing, drying, wax, resin and glycerine are five methods with one motive behind them, and a long history of disappointment.
6 minute read
Conservation
Photography pending
Two identical stems side by side, one faded by months on a windowsill, one kept in shade.Light and fading: the only real clock
Photodegradation is the single mechanism that ages a made flower, and you can avoid it entirely.
6 minute read
Photography pending
A cut cross-section of a stem showing the wire core inside the fibre.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.
5 minute read
Photography pending
A returned piece on the bench mid-repair, the damaged stem unwrapped and the replacement waiting.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.
5 minute read