floral decoration

Art of arranging living or dried plant material for adornment of the body or home, for public and religious ceremonies, or for festivals.

Line, form, colour, texture, balance, porportion, and scale are important aspects of floral arrangement, as is the container. The earliest pictorial example is a 2nd-century Roman mosaic from the villa of Hadrian at Tivoli depicting a basket of cut flowers. Dutch and French still-life paintings of the 17th–18th centuries show the popularity of floral arrangements. Their long history in China and Japan is often associated with religious and philosophical beliefs; Japanese forms have become influential in the West. See also ikebana.

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Introduction

      art of arranging living or dried plant material for adornment of the body or home, or as a part of public ceremonies, festivals, and religious rituals.

      Since the earliest days of civilization, humans have used floral decorations, composed of living or dried cut-plant materials or artificial facsimiles, to embellish their environment and persons. Flowers have played an important part in folk festivals, religious ceremonies, public celebrations of all kinds, and, of course, courtships. Sophisticated cultures have generally expressed a love for decorating with flowers by carefully arranging them in especially chosen containers, while other societies have used them more informally: strewn, made into garlands and wreaths, or casually placed in waterholding vessels without thought of arrangement.

Elements and principles of design

      The term flower arrangement presupposes the word design. When flowers are placed in containers without thought of design, they remain a bunch of flowers, beautiful in themselves but not making up an arrangement. Line, form, colour, and texture are the basic design elements that are selected, then composed into a harmonious unit based on the principles of design—balance, contrast, rhythm, scale, proportion, harmony, and dominance. Line is provided by branches or slender, steeple-like flowers such as snapdragon, delphinium, and stock. Form and colour are as varied as the plant world itself. Moreover, forms not natural to the plant world can be created for contemporary abstract compositions by bending and manipulating branches, vines, or reeds to enclose space and create new shapes. Texture describes surface quality and can be coarse, as in many-petaled surfaces such as chrysanthemums, or smooth, as in anthuriums, calla lilies, and gladioli. There are many variations between these extremes. Leaves and woody stems also have varied textural qualities.

      A flower arrangement includes not only the flowers themselves but the container that holds them and the base on which the container may rest. If an accessory, such as a figurine, is included, that too becomes a part of the total design. The whole composition should relate in textural quality to its frame of reference, which might be a wood or glass table top or a linen cloth, and should be in close harmony with the style of the room for which it was planned, be it Louis XV or Danish modern.

      As the components of a design are selected and combined, a silhouette, or arrangement outline, is created. This outline is generally considered most interesting when the spaces in the composition vary in size and shape. Third dimension, or sculptural quality, is accomplished by allowing some of the plant materials in a grouping to extend forward and others to recede. Flower heads turned sideways, or toward the back, for example, break up contour uniformity and draw the eye into and around the composition. When a formal, static quality is sought, the contour is restricted or evenly shaped, often into such graduated forms as a pyramid or mound.

      Balance is psychologically important, for an arrangement that appears to be leaning, top-heavy, or lopsided creates tension in the viewer. (Occasionally, however, as in some modern arrangements, this is the very effect desired.) colour as well as the actual size of the plant material influences design stability. Dark colour values look heavier than light values; a deep red rose, for example, appears heavier in an arrangement than a pale pink carnation, even though they are the same size. An arrangement in which dark colours are massed at the top and light colours at the bottom can therefore appear top-heavy. Similar flowers placed in identical positions on either side of an imaginary vertical axis create symmetrical balance. If there is an unequal distribution of varying flowers and leaves on either side of the axis but their apparent visual weight is counterbalanced, asymmetrical balance is achieved. This compositional device is more subtle and often more pleasing aesthetically than symmetrical balance, for its effect is less apparently contrived and more varied. Contrasts of light and dark, rough and smooth, large and small, also give variety to the composition. An arrangement generally has a dominant area or centre of visual interest to which the eye returns after examining all aspects of the arrangement. An area of strong colour intensity or very light values, or a rather solid grouping of plant material along the imaginary axis and just above the container's rim, are devices commonly used as compositional centres. The rhythm of a dynamic, flowing line can be achieved by the graduated repetition of a particular shape, or by the combination of related colour values. Scale indicates relationships: the sizes of plant materials must be suitably related to the size of the container and to each other. Proportion has to do with the organization of amounts and areas; the traditional Japanese (arts, East Asian) rule that an arrangement should be at least one and a half times the height of the container is a generally accepted use of this principle. Proportion also relates to the placement of the arrangement in a setting. A composition is either overpowering or dwarfed if placed on too small or too large a surface or in too small or too large a spatial setting. Harmony is a sense of unity and belonging, one thing with another, that comes with the proper selection of all the components of an arrangement—colour, shape, size, and texture of both plant materials and container.

Materials

      Many different kinds of plant materials are used in floral decorations, among them flowers, foliage, grasses, grains, branches, berries, seeds, nuts, cones, fruits, and vegetables. The materials may be living, dried, or artificial. Initially, man was restricted to using native wildings, or uncultivated plants, but as civilization developed over a period of thousands of years, man became less dependent on the seasons and on the resources of the particular region in which he lived. As means of transportation improved and trading grew, plants were introduced from foreign countries and many have since been hybridized to improve or vary shape, size, and colour. In the 20th century the floral decorator has an enormously varied medium in which to create because plant materials can be flown from one part of the world to another. Since the 19th century, when extensive greenhouse cultivation first made it possible to purchase fresh flowers at any time of the year, there have been commercial growers of plant materials who supply the world's floral wholesale markets. The Netherlands (Netherlands, The), for example, is famous for the 10-mile stretch of greenhouses at Aalsmeer near Amsterdam. In the United States, California and Florida, particularly, have vast areas under cultivation for commercial flowers.

      Dried plant materials are generally used for what is traditionally called a winter bouquet. The cultivated flowers that are often dried are those with a naturally dry, stiff surface quality—such as strawflowers (Helichrysum bracteatum), globe amaranth (Gomphrena), and statice. North temperate zone wildings picked and preserved for dried arrangements include pearly everlasting, heather, and the sea lavender of salt marshes, as well as goldenrod, orange bittersweet berries, cattails, dock, teasel, and sumac. Many kinds of grasses—pampas, sea oats, millet, and sorghum, for example—are also dried, as are seed-bearing capsules such as the flat paper disks of honesty (Lunaria), orange Chinese lanterns (Physalis), and the wood roses from the Hawaiian morning glory (Ipomoea tuberosa). Other dried materials sometimes used in floral decorations are cones and nuts, long used for making wreaths and festoons for such winter festivals (feast) as Christmas; straw, used for Christmas decorations in Sweden and Lithuania; and grains, especially wheat and oats, often arranged in bunches for harvest decorations in Europe and America. Because of their fleshy substance, most fruits and vegetables do not dry well; the main exceptions are gourds, pomegranates, and artichokes.

      There are various ways of drying plant materials. Certain garden flowers (among them celosia, blue salvia, globe thistle, alliums, and hydrangeas) can be gathered at their peak of bloom and dried by hanging them upside down in a dark, dry place for several weeks. Flowers may also be individually dried using one of several techniques. A 17th-century Italian writer on horticulture, P. Giovanni Battista Ferrari, described a process of gently burying the flower heads in clean, sun-dried sand and allowing them to remain in a sun-heated place for several months. The same method was used in the 19th century. Later, borax was used, and in the 20th century silica gel, because of its ability to absorb moisture. This solution is gently brushed between and over every petal. Since this method of drying does not preserve the stems, the flower heads must be wired before they are arranged.

      Leaves and ferns are dried by pressing. The most delicate pressed flowers and foliage have been composed, mounted, and framed as pictures—a practice especially popular with 19th-century Romantics, who preserved floral souvenirs as sentimental personal memorabilia.

      Throughout history and in almost every conceivable medium man has created artificial plant materials. The Chinese fashioned peony blossoms and fruits from semiprecious stones and carved jade leaves, which they assembled into small trees. Gold lotus blossoms were highly treasured in eastern Asia. For European royalty in the late 19th century, the Russian-born jeweller Peter Carl Fabergé (1846–1920) designed exquisite single-stemmed flowers of gold, enamel, gems (gemstone), and semiprecious stones set in small rock-crystal pots. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Sèvres porcelain factory in France produced porcelain flowers with stems and leaves of ormolu (a metallic alloy resembling gold). At the same time, the Royal Worcester, Crown Staffordshire, and Royal Doulton factories in England (United Kingdom) became world-famous for their highly realistic porcelain floral arrangements, which are still made. The Victorians developed a home craft of making and arranging flowers and fruits. Wax, cloth, yarn, feathers, shells, and seeds were used to make the flowers and fruits, which were then either framed or placed under glass domes. Perhaps the most curious of these 19th-century decorations were the wreaths and floral displays made by twisting, knotting, and weaving the hair of one's family and friends around wire supports. Beaded flowers for cemetery and funerary bouquets have been popular in France since the 19th century; and paper flowers for festivals and home decoration have become a major folk art medium in Mexico and Japan. Because of their relatively low cost, durability, and easy maintenance (an occasional washing or dusting), plastic flowers and plants are in such great demand that their production has become an important 20th-century industry. Though still primarily used in public places, plastic plant materials are increasingly found in private homes, especially in the United States.

Techniques

      Cut plant materials, especially flowers, need special care and treatment before they are placed in vases. Ideally, flowers are picked some hours before they are arranged and never in the heat of the day. Generally, the bottoms of the stems are cut on a slant, placed in deep tepid water, and kept in a cool place, preferably overnight. Different materials have different conditioning needs. Woody stems are split several inches with pruning shears, then soaked in hot water. Stem ends may be crushed with a mallet instead, but clean cuts make it easier to impale branches on a needle holder. Milky stems, such as those of poppies, poinsettias, and large dahlias, are sealed by placing the tips in boiling water or over a flame for a few seconds. Foliage and flowers are protected from steam and flame by inserting the stems through a hole punched in newspaper, which is then drawn up over them. When arranging flowers, all foliage below the water line must be removed in order to prevent bacterial decay and the resulting unpleasant odour. Since the stems of flowers often seal over while being held in a florist shop or market, they must be recut by the purchaser. Packaged formulas do not aid in revival but are meant to be used during the preliminary soaking period. Roses and woody-stemmed flowers such as chrysanthemums can frequently be revived by recutting and placing them in hot water.

      Many tall containers can easily display flowers without holding mechanics, but if necessary they can be stuffed with upright pieces of privet or fine evergreens, such as juniper, which are sheared flat across the vase opening. The Japanese kenzan, or metal pin holder, usually called a needlepoint holder, is the most generally used mechanical aid. It is held in place with floral clay. In silver vases, melted paraffin (paraffin wax) is used as a fastener, for, unlike clay, it will not tarnish the container and can be removed easily with hot water. Crumpled chicken wire, or wire netting, is frequently stuffed into vases as an aid to support, and a water-absorbing plastic foam, sold in bricklike blocks, has also become very popular.

      The selection of a suitable container is an individual problem in every arrangement. It is considered a part of the overall design of the arrangement and is related to it in scale, colour, and texture. Its colour must enhance, not compete with, the arrangement. For the same reason many floral decorators prefer to use simply shaped, unadorned vases. The texture of the container is also chosen for compatibility with the floral arrangement. Coarse, heavy plant materials are usually arranged in a substantial container of pottery, pewter, copper, or wood. Delicate flowers and foliage are usually displayed in porcelain, glass, or silver. Fruits and vegetables are often arrayed in wooden or pottery bowls and baskets. The size of the container is also important. If it is too small, the plant materials will overpower it and the arrangement will appear top-heavy. If it is too large, it will not only dwarf the arrangement but will frequently destroy the unity of the composition, dividing the viewer's attention between the floral arrangement and the container. Containers are not used for all arrangements of plant materials. Compositions of driftwood, flowers, fruits, and vegetables are often arranged on a flat base of wood or bamboo, a tray, or slab of wood. To keep them fresh, flowers or foliage used in such an arrangement often are placed in solid-walled pin holders that hold water.

      A wooden base frequently completes a composition, since it can add visual weight at the bottom, which assists in balance. The Japanese traditionally use wood or lacquer bases and stands with all arrangements, and a porcelain vase in China was not considered complete without a carved teakwood stand. The stand has both aesthetic and practical advantages: it adds height to a display and prevents moisture stains on furniture or textiles.

Forms of floral decoration

      Plant materials are customarily arranged in containers, woven into garlands, and worn or carried for personal adornment. Flower bouquets that are carried include the nosegay and corsage. In the mid-19th century, the nosegay, or posy (a small bunch of mixed flowers), was much in fashion. No well-dressed Victorian lady appeared at a social gathering without carrying one, edged with a paper frill or delicate greens and sometimes inserted into a silver filigree holder. Messages of love were often spelled out in the flowers of the nosegay, for the “language of flowers” was carefully studied at the time, and courtships progressed through the sending of such floral symbols.

      Worn since the 18th century, the corsage has become especially popular in the 20th century. Instead of a nosegay, an admirer frequently sends a lady an orchid, a gardenia, or a small bunch of wired flowers to be worn at the waist, shoulder, or on the wrist, or attached to a handbag and carried. Only the flower heads are used in a corsage. Wires are inserted through the calyx (the usually green or leafy external portion of a flower) and bent to thrust the flowers forward or to the side; then the ends are bound together with tape or ribbon. Leaves or foliage threaded crosswise with wire are usually added. A ribbon bow often completes the corsage.

      Sprays are large, flat bouquets of long-stem plant material. They are either carried or placed on caskets or at tombs as commemorative offerings. If the plant material used is short-stemmed, wire is used to add length. The ends of the stems or wire extensions are frequently thrust into a block of moss or stiff plastic foam to secure the arrangement. A blanket of flowers is often laid over a casket at a funeral or over a racehorse in the winner's circle. Blankets are made by stretching burlap over a frame, covering it with a layer of flat fern, and then adding delicate asparagus fern (Sprengeri). The fern surface is then covered with flower heads, which are threaded with wire and fastened on the underside of the blanket.

      Garlands (garland) are bands of plant materials that have been woven or in some other way attached together; they are not arranged in a container. A circular garland is called a wreath, or if it is worn around the head, a chaplet. Garlands draped in loops are called festoons or swags. The origin of these forms is unknown, but evidence of their use dates from ancient times and is not restricted to any particular culture.

      Garlands have been used for many purposes. Ancient Egyptians placed them on mummies. The Greeks used them to decorate their homes, civic places, and temples. For festive occasions the ancient Romans (ancient Rome) wore garlands of strung rose petals. When these garlands of roses were suspended from ceilings, the conversation that took place beneath them was sub rosa. On European festival days such as Corpus Christi, cattle are bedecked with neck garlands. On Indian holy days, the Hindus take garlands to the temple to be blessed before wearing them; they also hang garlands on the statues of their deities.

      In the ancient world it was probably the Romans who most fully developed the ornamental form and use of the festoon. Fine examples are carved in marble on the Ara Pacis or Altar of Peace (13–9 BC) near the Mausoleum of Augustus in Rome. Roman festoons were usually made of fruit, grain, leaves, and flowers. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries it was fashionable, particularly in England, to create artificial festoons over fireplace mantels. Called swags (swag), they were usually carved of wood. Among the most famous are those executed by the English sculptor Grinling Gibbons.

      Wreaths (wreath) have been both worn and displayed. In antiquity the wreath was bestowed upon public officials, athletes, poets, and returning warriors. The ancient Greco-Roman custom of bestowing a laurel crown, or wreath, upon a poet was revived during the Renaissance, especially in Italy. Napoleon chose a laurel wreath of gold for his crown, emulating the emperors of the Roman Empire. At Christmas time since the 19th century, wreaths of evergreens, holly, or pinecones and nuts have been traditionally hung as decorations in northern Europe, the United States, and Canada. In medieval and Tudor England the boar served for Christmas dinner had a wreath of rosemary and bay. During Advent, a period including the four Sundays before Christmas, a wreath with four candles (each symbolizing one of the Advent Sundays) is traditionally hung in Christian homes and churches.

      Plant materials have been used for personal adornment in forms other than corsages, nosegays, garlands, and wreaths. Ancient Egyptian wall paintings show women with lotus blossoms in their hair, and today the hibiscus adorns the hair of women of the South Seas. Necklaces of flowers are commonly worn in South and Southeast Asia. In Hawaii, Vanda orchids or velvety frangipani blossoms are strung into long necklaces called leis, the customary gifts of both welcome and farewell.

      Many types of dress accessories are decorated with flowers. Staffs ornamented with plant material are seen in ancient art and mentioned in ancient literature. Egyptian servants or standard bearers were often depicted holding staffs of papyrus and lotus blossoms. An attribute of Dionysus and his satyrs was the thyrsus, a staff topped by a pinecone and sometimes further decorated with vine or ivy leaves and grapes. Well-known flowering staffs or rods include those of Aaron, the brother of Moses, and St. Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus.

      Pictorial effects have been achieved by using cut flower heads or petals to create masses of colour that are then worked into patterns. The traditional carpet of flowers laid down on the Via Livia in Genzano, Italy, for the feast of Corpus Christi (Corpus Christi, Feast of) is incredibly intricate and colourful. Figures of angels, madonnas, and saints, geometric designs, and coats of arms are worked out with flower petals to form a carpet over which the religious procession passes. Mexicans frequently carpet their churches with mosaics of wild flowers, and in The Netherlands (Netherlands, The) during tulip time flower pictures are made for competition. About 12 feet square, made for the most part of tulip and hyacinth blossoms, they are designed on inclined backgrounds for better visibility. Some of these pictures are three-dimensional.

      For centuries flower-covered floats have been used in parades (parade). The Italian painter and architect Giorgio Vasari (1511–74) described 21 garland-decorated floats he designed for a pageant in Florence. The most famous of modern floral parades is the Tournament of Roses parade held on New Year's Day at Pasadena, California. Floats up to 50 feet (15 metres) in length are constructed over the chassis of motor vehicles. Rough framework is covered with chicken wire shaped and sprayed with a polyvinyl coating. Flower heads are attached with either glue or wire.

Historical and stylistic developments

Western

Ancient world

      There is evidence through painting and sculpture that during the Old Kingdom (c. 2686–c. 2160 BC) the Egyptians placed flowers in vases. In the tomb of Perneb bas-relief carvings show lotus blossoms and buds alternately arranged in flared bowls that were set upon banquet tables or carried in processions. Paintings of functional vases with spouts designed to support the heavy-headed lotus flower are found in the tombs of Beni Hasan (c. 2500 BC). Formal bouquets of lotus and berries offered to the dead are represented in the paintings from the tomb of Apuy at Thebes. Garlands and wreaths, floral headdresses, and collars were woven. Because of the formalized rules of Egyptian art, the lotus (Nymphaea), sacred to the goddess Isis, and papyrus, both of which were easily conventionalized, were the plant materials depicted almost exclusively for 2,000 years. During the Ptolemaic era (305–30 BC) perfume recipes, flower garlands found on mummies, and Greek and Roman writings reveal a more varied native plant life and show that foreign plants had been introduced, most notably the rose.

      The ancient Greeks' love of flowers was expressed mainly in the making and wearing of wreaths and garlands. Vase paintings, temple friezes, and architectural ornamentation all illustrate their widespread use. They were also frequently mentioned in Greek literature. The techniques of making garlands and wreaths, the most appropriate plant materials, and the proper time and way to wear or display them, were the subjects of several treatises. Fruits and vegetables mounded in baskets or spilling in profusion out of a cornucopia were types of arrangements used for religious offerings.

      The earliest depiction of mixed cut flowers, artfully arranged in a container, is a mosaic dating from the early 2nd century AD of a basket of flowers from the emperor Hadrian's villa at Tivoli near Rome (ancient Rome). Garlands and wreaths continued to be popular among the Romans, as did displays of fruits and vegetables in cornucopias and baskets.

Middle Ages

      Little evidence remains of floral decoration in early medieval Europe. In the mosaics of Ravenna, the Byzantines depicted highly contrived formal compositions. Symmetrical, with an emphasis on height, these arrangements were usually spires of foliage with regularly placed clusters of flowers or fruit.

      Illuminated manuscripts of the Gothic (Gothic art) period (from the 13th century to the 15th) occasionally include simple floral bouquets holding symbolic flowers. This was a time of intense religious fervour, and plant symbolism assumed great importance. There was both a liturgical and a secular language of flowers. In the church, for example, the rose symbolized the Virgin; in the chivalric courts, passionate love. Usually plant materials were casually placed in utilitarian containers such as earthenware jugs, bottles, glass tumblers, and in majolica, or glazed and enamelled pottery, drug jars called albarelli. The still life in the foreground of the open centre panel of the “Portinari Altarpiece” by the Flemish painter Hugo van der Goes (Goes, Hugo van der) is an illustration of this type of arrangement. Metal ewers often held Madonna lilies (Lilium candidum), as in the 15th-century painting “The Annunciation” by Rogier van der Weyden (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

15th and 16th centuries

      Floral decorations became more studied and elaborate during the Renaissance period of the 15th and 16th centuries. The revival of interest in antiquity influenced the widespread use of garlands and wreaths in Renaissance Europe, especially in Italy. They were popular for pageants and feasts as well as for decorating houses and churches, and were commonly depicted in the art of the time. Among the most notable examples are the terra-cotta wreaths that framed the decorative ceramic plaques and reliefs made by the della Robbia family in the late 15th century, and the garlands of flowers, fruits, and vegetables in the paintings of such northern Italian masters as Andrea Mantegna and Carlo Crivelli. Cut-plant materials were generally arranged in either high sparse bouquets or tight low bunches. There were also pyramidal compositions in pedestal vases, such as those in the background of the painting “Virgin and Child and St. John” (Borghese Gallery, Rome) by the Florentine artist Sandro Botticelli. Arrangements of fruits and vegetables on salvers or in baskets also were popular.

17th century

      The arrangement of plant materials truly became an art and an important decorative device in the 17th century. During this period of worldwide exploration, colonization, and commerce, new plants were introduced into Europe, where an avid interest in horticulture developed. Still-life paintings (still-life painting) of the late 16th, 17th, and early 18th centuries reveal what a great variety of plants there was in the gardens of Europe. Beginning with Jan Brueghel (Bruegel, Jan, The Elder) (called “Velvet Brueghel”; 1568–1625), a tradition of flower painting developed in Flanders and Holland, which culminated with the works of Jan van Huysum (Huysum, Jan van) (1682–1749). The canvases of the many hundreds of still-life painters of the period are valuable source material for the student of the history of floral decorations and gardens. They must, however, be considered as idealized compositions and not as literal translations onto canvas of actual bouquets. Early 17th-century pictures, particularly those of Jan Brueghel, who painted one-of-a-kind arrangements, seemed most interested in displaying the content of the garden itself. Depictions of later 17th-century bouquets show profuse arrangements that reflect the sensuality and exuberance of the Baroque (Baroque period) style. Curvilinear elements such as sinuous S curves are other Baroque devices of design used to create grandiloquent, dramatic compositions. The massed bouquets of the Baroque period are studies in dominance, contrast, rhythm, and sculptural effect. The eye is drawn around and into the bouquets by the turning of flower heads, the reversing of leaves, and the curving of graceful flower stems.

      The French (France) style of the Louis XIV period (1643–1715) is best exemplified in the flower engravings of Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer. The plates for his famous portfolio Le Livre de toutes sortes de fleurs d'après nature (Book of All Kinds of Flowers from Nature) accurately portray flowers from a horticultural standpoint and at the same time show prototypes of display. These floral arrangements are freer and more airy than those of the Low Countries and yet suggest Baroque opulence. Flora ouerocultura di fiori (“Flora: The Cultivation of Flowers”), a renowned garden book published in Rome in 1633 by the horticulturist P. Giovanni Battista Ferrari, illustrates the styles of floral displays preferred by the Italians (Italy) and also describes arranging techniques and devices. Among the ingenious devices illustrated is a vase with holes in its removable top that made it easy to arrange flowers and change water.

18th century

      The floral arrangements of the early 18th century were dominated by French and English (United Kingdom) taste. In France, cultural and social life centred in the intimate rooms of Parisian town houses rather than in the vast rooms and halls of Louis XIV's Versailles palace. Bouquets, therefore, were comparatively small, to be in scale with their setting. The more delicate colouring and lighter visual weight of these arrangements can be attributed in part to feminine taste, which decidedly influenced the Rococo style. Personal and charming, the Rococo bouquet and its variations remained popular into the 20th century. English bouquets of the corresponding Georgian (Georgian style) period were often more profuse than the Rococo. Many books written to catalog the wide variety of plant materials available in 18th-century England gave incidental information on how to care for and display them. One of the best known of these works is the two-volume Gardeners Dictionary by the horticulturist Philip Miller. In it he mentions dried bouquets and chimney flowers. It was customary in English homes to arrange flowers and branches in the hearth during the summer months when the fireplace was not in use. These arrangements were referred to as “bough pots.” The best known English illustrations of Georgian flower arrangements are those designed by the Flemish artist Peter Casteels for a nursery catalog called The Twelve Months of Flowers (1730). Since the flowers in each bouquet are numbered and keyed to a list at the bottom of the plate, and are one-of-a-kind collections, they are not truly representative of live arrangements. Jacob van Huysum's monthly paintings display flowers more naturally. Both series are invaluable as source material for garden flowers.

      The Neoclassical period of the late 18th and early 19th centuries brought about a revival of wreaths and garlands in the style of Greco-Roman antiquity. Floral bouquets were arranged in vases of classical severity.

19th century

      The interest of the 19th-century Romantics in nature made floral arrangements an important part of a decorative scheme. With the advent of the clipper ship more exotic plant materials were introduced into Europe and the United States. From China came new varieties of chrysanthemums, bleeding heart, rhododendrons, and azaleas; from South Africa, the gladiolus, freesia, and pelargoniums; and from Mexico, the dahlia, gloxinia, and fuchsia. Many old garden favourites were greatly improved as a result of widespread scientific interest in horticulture and botany. The Industrial Revolution made it possible to manufacture a great variety of economically priced ceramic and glass containers. Artificial flowers were extremely popular and were made in many different materials in both home and factory.

      The books and magazines of the Victorian age agreed that the art of arranging flowers was an accomplishment all young ladies should acquire. Except for the single flower in the small bud vase, the most popular style of Victorian arrangement was a tightly compact mass of flowers, greens, grasses, and ferns. The two-level epergne, with a flared top for flowers and lower tier for fruit, frequently was used for the centre of the dining table. Since the flowers selected were usually of a brilliant hue, strong colour contrast was a characteristic of Victorian arrangements. These gay floral groupings, however, were usually softened by ferns and other kinds of foliage.

20th century

      The book Flower Decoration in the House (1907) greatly influenced the development of 20th-century floral decoration as an art. The author was Gertrude Jekyll (Jekyll, Gertrude), already notable in the gardening world. For a long time, floral decoration in big houses had been the charge of the head gardeners or the local florists; in smaller houses, the charge of the mistress of the house. In any case, arrangement was done with varying degrees of skill and little guidance. With Gertrude Jekyll's book, the idea that flower decorations actually could be planned and designed in such a way as to heighten the quality of a room came to be widely accepted. Interior decorators added their specialized knowledge to the practical expression of this view.

      The rise of the women's Garden Club movement in the 1930s and the growth of flower shows led to establishing definite rules for arrangement, especially in the United States. The classic Japanese rules of design (see below Japan (floral decoration)) were adopted, and others were formulated. Three main types of arrangement were recognized—the mass, the line, and the combination line-mass. Emphasis was placed on design shapes such as the crescent, or Hogarth curve, and colour studies in related or contrasting harmonies. In exhibitions thematic compositions were popular, and often arrangements interpreted abstract ideas, emotions, places, and natural phenomena. Naturalistic compositions with just a few flowers made use of stones, moss, and branches or driftwood with striking line interest. In the mid-20th century flower arranging tended to follow contemporary art (floral decoration) trends. A Japanese revolt against traditional aesthetic canons also had great influence on Western development of free-style arrangements that reject naturalism and are often unconventional in their placement and use of treated material. Traditional principles of visual design are often rejected in such modern arrangements.

      Assemblages of such diverse elements as scrap metal, rope, and plastic are composed with a minimum of plant material. Transition and rhythm yield to heightened contrast. Space is important, and new forms are created by bending plant material to create new shapes. Psychological tension is created by upsetting balance and symmetry.

Eastern

China and Korea

      The ancient Chinese could enjoy and feel themselves at one with the growth, maturity, and decline of a few flowers or a branch. The floral expressions of the Chinese have traditionally been based on the Confucian art of contemplation, the Buddhist (Buddhism) principle of preservation, and Taoist (Daoism) symbolism. For the Confucian (Confucianism), a floral arrangement was philosophically contemplated both as a symbol of organic existence and for its aesthetic aspects. Buddhists used flowers sparingly because of their religious doctrine prohibiting the taking of life. At least since the T'ang dynasty (AD 618–907), flowers have been placed on temple altars in a ku (gu), an ancient bronze ceremonial wine beaker dating from the Shang dynasty (18th to 12th century BC) whose shape was translated into porcelain in later dynasties. Hua Hsien, the flower goddesses of the Taoists, have traditionally been represented carrying flower-filled baskets. In Taoist symbolism, the four seasons were denoted by the white plum blossom of winter, the peony of spring, the lotus of summer, and the chrysanthemum of autumn. Each month also had its own flower. Longevity in plant arrangements was symbolized by pine, bamboo, and the long-lasting ling chih fungus. New Year (feast) floral displays featured the paper-white narcissus, and the tree peony (Paeonia moutan), designated the “king of flowers,” was used to symbolize good fortune.

      Usually the floral arrangements of the Chinese, like those of the Koreans, appear less obviously contrived than those of the Japanese. A composition frequently will be made of two or more arrangements in containers of different heights and shapes, often grouped with rocks or decorative objects. Chinese bouquets in baskets have a quality reminiscent of Western floral arrangements.

Japan

      The arrangement of flowers in Japan is an elaborate and unique art, with highly developed conventions and complex symbolism. The art developed from the custom of offering flowers to the Buddha and was introduced into Japan early in the 7th century by Ono No Imoko, Japanese ambassador to China, who founded the first and oldest school of floral art, the Ikenobō. All the later masters of the Ikenobō school are his descendants. Most important among the earliest styles was the mitsu-gusoku, an arrangement of three or five articles often consisting of an incense burner, a candlestick in the form of a stork, and a vase of flowers. These were usually displayed before pictures of the Buddha or of founders of Buddhist sects.

      Early styles were known as tatebana, standing flowers; from these developed a more massive and elaborate style, rikka (which also means standing flowers), introduced by the Ikenobō master Senkei around 1460. The early rikka style symbolized the mythical Mt. Meru of Buddhist cosmology. Rikka represented seven elements: peak, waterfall, hill, foot of the mountain, and the town, and the division of the whole into in (shade) and yō (sun). (In Chinese the characters for in and yō are read yin and yang, the passive or female and the active or male principles.) Formal rikka is arranged out of nine main branches and some accessory ones. Three branches are placed so that their tips form a triangle with unequal sides. From this pattern all later styles of Japanese floral art developed.

      In the early 18th century a three-branch, asymmetrical style, shōka, evolved from the rikka and was cultivated by the Ikenobō school. Shōka is written with Japanese characters meaning living flowers. These characters can also be read seika and ikebana; (ikebana) seika is the preferred reading by some schools, while ikebana today is the general term applied to any style of Japanese floral art. Up to the advent of shōka all styles of arrangements other than rikka had been known as nageire, meaning to throw, or fling into. This term was confined to arrangements in tall vases, and heika, vase flowers, is preferred to nageire by some schools. Shōka utilized three main branches, and emulated the natural growth of plant life. This illusion of growth was achieved by using buds, foliage, and blossoms; by superimposing stems as they emerged from the container; by turning up the tip ends of branches unless of a naturally drooping kind; and by placing tree branches above flowers and mountain material above that of the lowland. All combinations were seasonally correct. Uneven numbers of materials were always used, and rules of proportion dictated that plant material be at least one and one half times the height of the container. By the late 18th and early 19th centuries the shōka style had supplanted the rikka in popularity and many new schools flourished, including Enshūryū, Koryū, ēōdōryu, and Mishōryū. All these new schools utilized the three-branch form but adopted different nomenclatures for them.

      Western flowers were introduced into Japan following the Meiji Restoration (1868). The flower master Ohara Unshin, who established the Ohara school (early 20th century), devised for them a new container, based on the low bowls used for dwarfed plants. This new style, known as moribana (heaped-up flowers), permitted greater freedom in the choice and placement of materials. A variation was the creation of small realistic landscapes called shakei, sometimes referred to as memory sketches. In these, exposed water surface was a part of the design. In 1930 a group of art critics and flower masters proclaimed a new style of floral art called zen'ei ikebana (avant-garde flowers), free of all ties with the past. Foremost in this group was the Ikenobō master Teshigahara Sōfū (1900–79), who had founded the Sōgetsu school in 1927. The new style emphasized free expression. It utilized all forms of plant life, living and dead, and elements that had been previously avoided, such as bits of iron, brass, vinyl, stone, scrap metal, plastic, and feathers. Vines and branches were bleached and painted and even used upside down. Stems were crossed, even numbers of materials were used, and containers were often crude and exotic in shape.

      Until 1868 Japanese flower arrangement was generally a man's avocation, engaged in primarily by Buddhist priests, warriors, and the nobility. Following the Meiji restoration and particularly after the beginning of the 20th century, it was taken up by large numbers of women. Men, however, still head most of the principal schools.

      The total number of schools that teach floral decoration throughout Japan in the 20th century is believed to number from 2,000 to 3,000, varying in size from several thousand to millions of adherents. Each school has its own rules of arrangement, though styles may differ only slightly from one another. All arrangements are asymmetrical and achieve a three-dimensional effect. The traditional styles are still taught, many with modern variations, but the bolder, less restrained, and unconventional free-style forms of arrangement now seem to be the most popular. The material used in Japanese (arts, East Asian) floral arrangements is held in position by various artifices, the most popular of which are the kubari, forked twig, and the kenzan, needlepoint holder.

      Japanese flower arranging has influenced that of the West considerably, particularly in the mid-20th century. Many popularizations of the art have flourished in the United States.

Other cultures

      Outside the West and the Far East, the arranging of plant materials was more a casual part of everyday life than a formally recognized medium of artistic expression. The elaborate stylistic traditions evolved and formulated in the West and Far East through centuries of sophisticated creative activity are rarely found, therefore, in other cultures. In the Islāmic world, for example, simple, modestly scaled arrangements predominated: sparse, symmetrically arranged bouquets; casually grouped bunches of flowers; or blossoms floating on liquid surfaces. The garlands made in India for adorning home, temple, statuary, and man himself were simpler than the bouquet or arranged floral materials found in the more aesthetically complex traditions of the West and Far East. Also in contrast to these artistically self-conscious arrangements are the stiff, mounded groupings of plant materials made for festivals in Southeast Asia.

Julia S. Berrall

Additional Reading

Liberty Hyde Bailey and Ethel Zoe Bailey (comps.), Hortus Second: A Concise Dictionary of Gardening, General Horticulture and Cultivated Plants in North America (1941), basic for nomenclature; Victor Loret, La Flore pharaonique d'apres les documents hieroglyphiques et les specimens decouverts dans les tombes, 2nd ed. (1892), includes information concerning wreaths and garlands; Charles Victor Daremberg and E. Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquites Grecques et Romaines d'apres les textes et les monuments, vol. l, pt. 2 (1877), lists flowers grown and ornamental uses (under “Corona” and “Coronarius et Coronaria”); John Gerard, The Herball (1597), descriptions and contemporary wood engravings of English garden flowers; John Parkinson, Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris (1629), descriptions and usage of flowers in 17th-century England; P. Giovanni Battista Ferrari, Flora ouero cultura di fiori (1633), on the culture and care of cut flowers, including how to preserve, arrange, and ship them, with interesting illustrations; Philip Miller, The Gardeners Dictionary, 2 vol. (1735), an important and popular 18th-century work, with full descriptions of garden flowers and illustrations; Helen Gere Cruickshann (ed.), John and William Bartram's America (1957), contains information about new plant discoveries and exchanges of garden material between America and England in the 18th century; Godey's Lady's Book (1830–98), almost monthly advice in the editorial pages about gardening or arranging flowers; J. Ramsbottom, A Book of Roses (1939), information about old-fashioned roses; Ralph G. Warner, Dutch and Flemish Flower and Fruit Painters of the 17th and 18th Centuries (1928), profusely illustrated; Julia S. Berrall, A History of Flower Arrangement, rev. ed. (1968), on all styles and periods, including original source lists of plant materials and many illustrations; Margaret Fairbanks Marcus, Period Flower Arrangement (1952), emphasis on art; Josiah Conder, The Theory of Japanese Flower Arrangements (1935), reprint of an original paper read by the author in 1889 to the Asiatic Society of Japan, to which have been added 36 colour plates of Ikenobō and moribana arrangements; Alfred Koehn, The Art of Japanese Flower Arrangement (Ikebana): A Handbook for Beginners (1934), with actual photographs instead of paintings; Donald Richie and Meredith Weatherby (eds.), The Mastersʾ Book of Japanese Flower Arrangement: With Lessons by the Masters of Japan's Three Foremost Schools: Sen'ei Ikenobo, Houn Ohara, Sofu Teshigahara (1966), contains an excellent historic section illustrated from the arts and photographs in colour and black and white contemporary expressions; Shozo Soto, The Art of Arranging Flowers (1966), on all aspects of Japanese flower arranging, with excellent colour and black and white illustrations throughout. Later works include Gertrude Jekyll, Flower Decoration in the House (1982), and Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden, 8th ed. (1982); Emma Wood and Jane Merer, Flower Crafts (1982); Marian Aaronson, Flowers in the Modern Manner (1981); Tokuji Furuta, Interior Landscaping (1983); Interior Plantscape Association (U.S.), Manual of Practice (1980); Mary Adams, Natural Flower Arranging (1981); Edith Black, Modern Flower Arranging (1982).

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