The Language of Flowers

This weekend I had the opportunity to take a class with Taylor Saleem, whose work I have admired for years. She works in silver and leather, and I like how she brings botanical elements from her garden into her work. She also has some fun collaborations with her bestie, who works with enamel.

The class was offered by Francesca Watson’s Makery Arts in a hybrid model, with half the students live in Texas, and the rest of us participating in real time from our home studios.

In this class, we used the botanical illustrations from the Victorian-era The Language of Flowers to craft a message with our miniature silver corsage. In the piece that I created, the Hardy Geranium on the right represents ‘health’ and ‘returning joy’ and the Cosmos on the bottom left represents ‘harmony’ and ‘peacefulness’. Here’s hoping those wishes come true!

Taylor shared that she often uses the sawing of botanical elements as a way of getting back into a routine after time away from her bench. She then seeks to combine the pieces she has prepared. In a similar fashion, I created a few flowers and tried different combinations before I settled on this geranium:

I hope you enjoyed learning about the inspiration behind this piece. It is not layered like Taylor’s, but I feel like it’s a nice progression from ideas that I explored in Heart of the Maker last year, and I look forward to exploring these ideas further, now that it’s warm enough to be in the shop again. 🌸