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Most Sincere Flowers: Artificial Flowers
2022-05-21
Love is sending a handful of paper roses? Compared with flowers that wither and wither after a short period of splendor, perhaps a bouquet of bright artificial flowers can retain love more lastingly. The author of this article is a fan of artificial flowers, because in her opinion, the act of "kidnapping" flowers from their homeland to selling them in other places will make them lose their color and lose their minds, while a bouquet of carefully crafted artificial flowers condenses the producer's full Love.
I understand why people prefer fresh flowers—we imagine they’re individuals like us, delicate, one of a kind and all the more precious for the fact that their time on earth is limited. But real flowers aren’t quite as rare as they seem, nor quite as personal as we’d like them to be. Their authenticity —the essence of their appeal—is often illusory.
Regardless of what my mother says, I don’t believe that organic authenticity is really what we prize most in a flower. Take the Rafflesia arnoldii : It may grow in the wild, just as God intended, but it looks like a scary open wound and smells like a decaying rat. The artificial flower, on the other hand, may not have originated in the field, but it has long found a stately perch. Imitations were once prized by nobles, from the palaces of imperial China to Versailles, where Louis XIV’s courtiers are believed to have sought silken blossoms for the tops of their bed canopies. From these royal lineages to the more democratic-spirited creations of today’s artisans, handmade blossoms remain a proud tradition.
Maybe there’s a good reason so many people buy Eco Flowers. Maybe people are seeing beyond the supposed authenticity of an orchid, kidnapped from its true home, so that you can impulse-buy it at Ikea, only to watch it “bloom” on your dinner table in the dead of a New England winter. The people who ship soil-grown flowers from across the globe—which are the bulk of a roughly $31 billion floral industry—are the ones selling a falsehood; what authentic connection to nature could possibly arise from such a convoluted arrangement? And how sad that a flower, so alienated from its true home, is supposed to communicate feelings of genuine connection.
I understand why people prefer fresh flowers—we imagine they’re individuals like us, delicate, one of a kind and all the more precious for the fact that their time on earth is limited. But real flowers aren’t quite as rare as they seem, nor quite as personal as we’d like them to be. Their authenticity —the essence of their appeal—is often illusory.
Regardless of what my mother says, I don’t believe that organic authenticity is really what we prize most in a flower. Take the Rafflesia arnoldii : It may grow in the wild, just as God intended, but it looks like a scary open wound and smells like a decaying rat. The artificial flower, on the other hand, may not have originated in the field, but it has long found a stately perch. Imitations were once prized by nobles, from the palaces of imperial China to Versailles, where Louis XIV’s courtiers are believed to have sought silken blossoms for the tops of their bed canopies. From these royal lineages to the more democratic-spirited creations of today’s artisans, handmade blossoms remain a proud tradition.
Maybe there’s a good reason so many people buy Eco Flowers. Maybe people are seeing beyond the supposed authenticity of an orchid, kidnapped from its true home, so that you can impulse-buy it at Ikea, only to watch it “bloom” on your dinner table in the dead of a New England winter. The people who ship soil-grown flowers from across the globe—which are the bulk of a roughly $31 billion floral industry—are the ones selling a falsehood; what authentic connection to nature could possibly arise from such a convoluted arrangement? And how sad that a flower, so alienated from its true home, is supposed to communicate feelings of genuine connection.
Handcrafted flowers, by contrast, make no pretenses. They are the sincerest of flowers, precisely because they are made—with intention, craft, ingenuity and quirky imperfection. Born in the heart and shaped by the singular hand of the gift giver, these artful flowers are the ones that most resemble love itself.
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