Laura and Matt got married in April 2021. It was a pleasure creating a ceramic vase and a ceramic wall tile as everlasting keepsakes for them, as a reminder of their special day.
The Flowers
Laura’s bouquet was a beautiful mix of stems by Welwyn Florists, and the flowers in jars on the tables were bought from a supermarket which I thought was a great idea.
When the flowers arrived with me in the post, they were still beautifully fresh and smelt amazing. Laura had carefully wrapped them in a plastic bag with damp kitchen roll at the bottom of the stems. The bag was left untied to avoid the flowers sweating and developing little brown spots.
I always lay all of the stems out in a line to let them breathe a bit, after their journey to me in the post. Meanwhile I’m deciding which flowers would look best in certain positions, and working out a composition on the rolled out sheets of clay.
I try not to overthink this process. The flowers are so full of organic movement, I like to let the stems do most of the work by themselves and I work around how they organically position themselves when rolled.
The Process
Once the composition is decided and the flowers are pressed into the clay, which I roll by hand using a rolling pin, each individual stem is carefully peeled back out of the clay. Beautiful imprints of the flowers are left behind, preserving their organic skeleton. This is my favourite part of the process – oh so satisfying. The fresher the flowers, the easier the process is because the stems usually peel out of the clay in one piece. Dried flowers still impress just as beautifully and still leave the most gorgeous textures behind, but just take a little longer to pick out of the clay if they break and crumble. Tweezers are good in this instance!
Once the flower imprinted clay is left to dry for a while, I construct the material into a vase form which is chosen by the customer. In this case, Laura chose a medium round vase. Alternatively, if a tile is being made, the clay is cut to shape and size and left to dry. Laura chose to have both a vase and a wall hanging tile made with her wedding flowers.
Colour is added to the flower imprints using a variety of ceramic glazes and pigments. I always try to match the colour of the flowers as best as possible, unless the customer requests otherwise. For example, the stems and flowers could all be blue if desired.
The Results
I was really pleased with the results of these pieces when they came out of the kiln. I was even more pleased when I received Laura’s feedback after receiving the pieces (see quote below).
Thank you so much Laura for asking me to preserve your wedding flowers from your special day. It was both an honour and a pleasure.
“The vase and tile just arrived and we are so unbelievably thrilled with them, they’re absolutely stunning! I know you sent us photos but they don’t do them justice at all, they’re amazing and you should be so proud of your work, you are so incredibly talented! I have friends who are getting married later in the year and I’ve already told them they have to send their flowers to you!
I’m so pleased that we were able to support an amazing small business like yours.”
