Reviews of Habibi Funk 031, Kayatibu, and The Good Ones
Flowers that will not fade
This lavish book transcends the botanical by discussing the flowers’ social, historical and symbolic significance, writes CHRISTINE LINDEY
Flower: Exploring the World in Bloom,
by Anna Pavord,
Phaidon Press
£39.95
AT 350 pages this large format book offers beautiful, full-page illustrations of a vast variety of flowers accompanied by useful information about each one.
A stimulating introduction discusses their social, historical and symbolic significance.
Unlike most botanical books it also functions as an art book with illustrations which range far and wide across time, cultures and types of objects. A gilded Sevres porcelain plate destined for the 19th-century courts of Europe is ornately hand painted with a central bouquet of flowers surrounded by butterflies, bows and scrolls.
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