Just in time for the holiday season, Phaidon has released a sumptuous and comprehensive survey that celebrates the beauty and appeal of flowers throughout art, history, and culture. Flower: Exploring the World in Bloom takes readers on a journey across continents and cultures to discover the endless ways artists and designers throughout history, from ancient Egypt to today, have depicted flowers and floral motifs.
Following in the footsteps of Phaidon’s international bestseller Plant: Exploring the Botanical World (2015), this captivating survey is a collection of more than 300 spectacular images of flowers depicted in art, history, science, and culture. Curated by an international panel of experts on the subject, including art historians, botanists, floral designers, and museum curators, the book opens with an introduction by Anna Pavord, author of the international bestseller The Tulip and renowned garden writer for The Independent.
The images in Flower span a wide variety of styles and media featuring both renowned and lesser-known works. These range from still-life paintings and photographs to botanical illustrations, herbaria, and sculptures as well as floral arrangements, film stills, and fashion and jewelry pieces. Entries span across the creative arts including drawn, painted, and photographed subjects as well as those sculpted from sugar, cut from paper, embroidered, or blown from glass.
The latest title in Phaidon’s Explorer series, Flower is organized as a visually stunning sequence with images, regardless of period, thoughtfully paired to allow interesting and revealing juxtapositions between them. Large-format reproductions are accompanied by a short and accessible text on the work. At the back of the book, a reference section features a glossary of select flowers and their meanings, written by florist and floral advocate Shane Connolly, alongside an illustrated timeline and selected biographies.
Whether depicted by the ancient Romans in stone mosaics, filmed in Technicolor, or digitally rendered with the latest cutting-edge technology, the beauty, symbolism, and presence of flowers in our everyday lives has been an enduring focus for artists globally and will continue to inspire for years to come. Flower is really the perfect book for all those interested in this beloved subject and how the grace and charm of blooms transcend garden walls to a vast scope of creative mediums.
