FEATHER FLOWERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 309, 21 March 1928, Page 5

FEATHER FLOWERS

In a little side street in London is a shop which is like a real flower shop and yet not like any shop one has ever seen before, for there, arranged carelessly in the most enchanting bowls and bits of old blue china, and pewter, and copper lustre, are all the familiar flowers of our gardens. Perhaps you will see a little old blue jug with some marigolds in it, some friendly blue violets in green leaves looking as if they had just that moment been picked off a clump in the garden and popped into a small pewter mug. For “copy” the artists in #this fascinating workroom go direct to Nature, and looking at some of their models one could almost imagine getting a breath of their elusive perfume. Feather flower-making was an art known to the old French, but in this little shop in England the only natural flowers are made from this strange material by entirely original processes. Every flower has the attention of four workers before it reaches the public—the selector, the dyer, the cutterout, and the maker. Goose feathers are used entirely because they have a broad flat base to work on. One carnation has sixty feathers in its perfect make-up, and a single head of -blue delphinium takes no less than 500 feathers! Flowers are also made of china, too, and experiments are being made with a mixture of pearls and felt to form a very exquisite pea-pod which is just bursting open to show a row of pearl peas.