ROBBIE HONEY BLOG

I was invited by a friend last weekend to see the exhibition of the works of Mary Delaney at The John Soane Museum, www.soane.org.

Mrs Delaney (1700-1788) created  botanical collages of flowers using hundreds of pieces of cut coloured paper put together with astonishing precision and her collection of botanical collages were self styled as Flora Delanica.

She was also a keen embroiderer. Some of her embroidery was exhibited and although it was beautiful it did not capture my heart like her ‘Paper mosaicks’.



I think the Spider lily collage above is absolutely exquisite, as is the Passion Flower below.

Can you even begin to imagine the precision time and effort to cut those tiny strips of paper to make up the Passion flowers filaments?

After the exhibition we took a brisk walk to Soho and had tea at Maison Bertaux where I ate a life size marzipan fig!

Paperwhite Narcissi are in the market at the moment and they are my absolute favourite Narcissi. Each tiny flower is like a little white daffodil (for those of you who are not familiar with them) and they have a distinctive scent that you will either love or hate. Even a few of their tiny flowers will perfume an entire room. I love the scent; though I have been know at times to claim that the scent is faintly reminiscent of horse manure!

Paperwhites make a charming and simple hand tied wedding bouquet.  Chicly finished with a band of white satin ribbon for a comfortable grasp. 

Recently we did some charming collections of paper whites cut short and arranged in clear glass nightlights in a grid on square mirrors. A modern, chic and stylish table centre which captured the naive look our client wanted to achieve. 

As we dressed the tables with the flowers on the evening of the event I silently prayed that the guests seated at the tables would enjoy the scent of the Paperwhites and not wonder what the strange smell was in the room!

Gloriosa are a flower very close to my heart as they are the national flower of Zimbabwe, the country I grew up. They grow wild in the bush there and appear all over the countryside in the rainy season in vivid splashes of Orange and red. They are locally known as flame lilies or Jongwe which in Shona means Rooster.

Below is a picture of me in Zimbabwe admiring a Gloriosa growing on Domboshawa (a large Granite rock structure which lies just North of the capital city of Harare)

A few years ago Hermes commissioned us to create a curtain of flowers to drape over the entrance of their Sloane street store for a party. It was to the Gloriosa that we turned to create the fabric of this curtain.

We strung hundreds of them onto fishing line to create the curtain which we finished with a boss of velvety rouge noir roses and a fringing of red Amaranthus which you can see below.

An abundance of Gloriosa looks incredible but just a few flower heads floating in a glass fishbowl look very striking too.