Flora Domestica: A History Of Flower Arranging

Mary Rose Blacker

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Review

My heart sank at the prospect of a National Trust book on the history of flower arranging, but I was much cheered by discovering in the introduction the name of Gervase Jackson-Stops, who as the Trust’s Architectural Advisor was the curator of the great exhibition in Washington on The Treasure Houses Of Britain hbk £75.

In this work, using paintings, engravings, and photographs as well as literary material from the National Trust’s archive, Mary Rose Blacker investigates the history of the flower in, and as, art from the bow-pots of the 16th Century to the wild extravagances of the Edwardian dinner table.  Images range from early herbals, paintings by Holbein and Jan Breughel, embroidered chair covers, painted chimneyboards, a wealth of blue and white pottery, Gillray cartoons, watercolour interiors, both grand and humble, all the way to photographs displaying “le goût Rothschild” at Waddeson, and culminating in a splendid portrait of the surprisingly butch Constance Spry, whose Flower Decoration of 1932 had such an influence on the generation of Pulbrooks, Goulds and Moyses Stevens who are still decking our grander occasions.

Though largely concentrating on interiors, the garden as source of flowers is also discussed and it is fascinating to note when certain plants were introduced; the pot marigold came, no-one knows whence, around 900 A.D., John Tradescant brought back the Martagon lily for Charles I in 1596, Michaelmas daisies turned up from New York about 1710 and the sweet pea, as we know it today, only appeared in 1900 after Lord Spencer did a few genetic modifications.

While it is true that there are, to my taste at least, some fairly lurid recreations of historical flower arrangements, on the whole the visual impact is terrific and well serves the surprisingly sturdy text.  Lady Blacker has produced a very readable history of a largely unrecorded area of our domestic history. - review by Stewart Grimshaw