Dried Flowers

Flowers have been admired for their beauty and used as a means of personal expression throughout the history of mankind. The first probable usage of flowers was seen in the Paleolithic Age in burial sites. There have been evidences of a vast cluster of pollen of local plant species at a Paleolithic burial site in East Africa, which suggests flowers were used then as a mourning tribute.

Multiple cultural influences have determined how flowers are used and arranged. Every part of the world, and every civilization have its own history of floral arrangements. In this article we have discussed separately the evolution of design in floral arrangements according to civilization and time.

The first ones to arrange flowers systematically into designs were the Chinese. While the rest of the world simply gathered and wore flowers, the Chinese developed the practice of putting their flowers into vases with water, and arranging their dried flowers into bouquets and arrangements meant for worship. From Japan emissaries came to China and took back with them the knowledge of arranging flowers. The Japanese took up the art seriously and set forth a number of philosophies around the art. A number of schools sprang up with their own respective philosophy related to arranging dried as well as fresh flowers in a way that depicted life and religion and man’s position between heaven and earth. The arrangements were simple and followed strict rules in accordance with religious symbolism.

In the middle-east, Egypt was one of the first nations to use flowers in everyday life. There have been evidences of pollen and dried flower material in tombs that suggest that flowers formed an important part of the Egyptian mourning rituals. Likewise the Greeks used flowers as symbols of bravery, victory and to denote social and military classes. Flowers were also held in cornucopias to represent an abundance of harvest and the bounty of nature.

In Europe flowers were arranged in bulky arrangements, more as a symbol of opulence rather than art. However painters such as Monet, Cezanne, Renoir, Van Gogh and Degas depicted flowers in their paintings to represent still life, and flowers became a favourite theme for Impressionist painters throughout Europe.

In the French royalty too flower arrangements were popular. The emperors and their consorts patronized several different styles of arranging flowers, both fresh and dried, that have remained central to the European philosophy of floral designs.

Americans in the later part of colonization integrated various styles of floral arrangement to create an entirely new philosophy of floral arrangement. This combined the mass used in European arrangements with the line formation of the Orient to create a line-mass arrangement that was the best of both worlds. Dried flower arrangements began to get increasingly popular as they could last years without getting damaged

In contemporary times more forms of floral decoration have evolved based on ancient practices and more modern philosophies, taking the art of floral deigns to an elevated form.