FLOWERS IN THE HOME

Evening Star, Issue 21822, 11 September 1934, Page 2

FLOWERS IN THE HOME

PICTURES IN VOGUE COMBINING THE REAL AND UNREAL The arrangement of flowers in the home is just as subject to the turns of fashion’s wheel as arc the decoration and furnishing of the rooms they adorn. The tentative revival of Victorianism lias led to a vogue for formally arranging posies, set rather stiffly in carefully balanced vases of contemporary design, states an overseas exchange. At the other end of the scale the uncompromisingly modernist room inspired by Corbusier and his followers, with its black plateglass. walls, its mctal-tnbo furniture, and its stern elimination of all but the barest surfaces and angles, calls for quite different treatment. BEAD BLOSSOMS. Indeed, the extremist of either school might banish real flowers altogether, the Victorians contenting themselves with groups of wax or head blossoms under bell-glasses, and the modernists limiting themselves to unnatural sprays

of exotics in gilt or silvered metal, in coloured compositions, or in blown glass of arresting colours. The vast majority of homes, however, conform to no set period, and the vast majority of housewives seize joyfully upon all the blaze of colour and variation of shape that the garden affords. AN EXPERIMENT. One amusing experiment that is gaining popularity among collectors of the modish flower-pictures, of whatever period, is to reproduce ns nearly as possible in actuality the pictured floral arrangement, and to group picture and flowers together. Thus the possessor of a seventeenth century Dutch flower picture—usually a colourful mass of mixed blooms crammed with careful carelessness into an ornate vessel—will place it above a cabinet or shelf, whereon rests a similar sort of container filled with as many of the same flowers as possible, arranged in identical manner. This • idea is easier when the pictures concerned are modern pieces, for a Cedric Morris, for example, is comparatively simple to copy effectively in real flowers and vases. There are too many famous modern flower painters to list here, bub readers will find, little difficulty in getting originals of excellent reproductions to suit their tastes, their purses, and their homes alike should they wish to try this unusual and attractive scheme. Then again, flower pictures are sometimes technical studies of contrasting surfaces, tiic artist having arranged a group where, a silk shawl, say, is flung over an ebony table, whereon stands a glass bowl full of flowers against a background of Japanese lacouerod screen, while a string of amber heads, a jade figureine, or a lace fan emphasise contrast still, further iu the foreground. If so selfconscious an effect suits both room and owner, an unusual note may be struck by re-ecl'ioing the pictured group in actuality.