You know the drill: if you are a proper Victorian lady, you pluck a pretty here and a pretty there from your garden and carefully place them in the middle pages of a large, heavy book to dry. If you caught the bridesmaid's bouquet at a wedding, you might do the same with one of the blossoms (although roses are mighty hard to really flatten!) And if you are a botanist gathering field specimens, you have special papers and pressing frames to lug out into the field -- or at least to your camp.
What happens to carefully selected and pressed flowers? Often, they are forgotten and found by a grandchild exploring grandma's library for the first time. Rarely, they are arranged and framed, like the displays above. One was made by my mother-in-law, the other by my husband. The botanists' finds join others in one herbarium or another.
A more modern form of the classic pressed botanic specimen is this collection of autumn leaves my nephew's wife sealed between two layers of sticky shelf plastic. I've had this panel on my office doorway for well over 15 years. Much of the color has faded, tho the reds still make their presence known.
For the up-to-date version of pressed flowers, take a look above. One day, the late husband had this bright idea and sent me out to my potted garden to gather flowers and leaves. He arranged the specimens on the platen of our new HP scanner and let her rip. I guess you could call the result virtual pressed flowers (and leaves.) Here are some of the scans I found in the archives:
Virtual advantages: the colors are almost as brilliant as the original (and can always be PhotoShopped to outshine Nature.) Why not just settle for photographs? At the time these were made, LH was still working with film which took t-i-m-e (finish the roll, take it to be processed, wait a couple of days, pick it up, scan it. Ugh.) Today? I'm not so sure; specimens can rapidly be arranged, photographed and downloaded tho a real herbarium specimen offers the botanist DNA for potential study in the future. However, for the lay person direct scanning is an interesting design approach. It certainly isn't limited to plant material!
At the time we were playing around, scanning was new to us. In retrospect, I am reminded of the early days of that ubiquitous office scanner of the 60s, the Xerox machine. Youngsters who never had to cope with purple ditto masters or correcting typos on a mimeograph stencil will never ever understand in their guts what a Revolution the Xerox brought to the world. Or what a great new toy it was. Office wags made copies of their bare bottoms; prissier ladies copied their keys, and the kids -- their hands and anything they could lay their hands on. Suddenly everybody was a publisher. Which probably helped bring down the USSR.
I already have a couple of projects in mind dealing with material that is difficult to light properly. When I get my own, comfy computer back. (I still feel like I am working in a motel room and forgot to bring along all the right gear.)
Many of her flowers were actually pieced together from individual petals.
What look like leaves are, in most cases, seed stalks from different grasses.
Many were made into cards for friends and family.
When I am privileged to catch a small glimpse of the accomplishments of Mom's fellow residents, I am awed and I am saddened. These are people who have led active lives, who have worked, created, lived and loved. Yet their time is short and today few beyond their families are aware of how much they have achieved.
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