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