Florilegium Amsterdam 1064
Flowers from the park and the streets, taken home to make the photos for the prints.
Cyanotypes, hand-coloured with watercolour
Historical photographic processes
Florilegium Amsterdam 1064
In 2020 I began wandering through postal code area 1064, gathering flowers and plants. The result is a florilegium - a Latin term for a treatise on flowers and ornamental plants, and a tradition dating back to the 17th century, when wealthy patrons commissioned artists to document the exotic plants arriving in Europe.
The word florilegium, I used to call my work herbarium art or botanical art, until someone pointed out that what I was actually making was a florilegium. The rise of botanical illustration as an art form grew out of books printed with images of medicinal plants and herbs for apothecary use, originating in the 15th century. At its heart, it is the art of portraying flowers and plants. Today, florilegia often document the flowers and plants of a particular place, or those threatened with extinction.
Florilegium Amsterdam 1064 is not only about the flowers and plants I find, but also about where I find them. It consists of 42 hand-coloured cyanotypes in A6, twelve cyanotypes of 19 by 28 cm, and nine cyanotypes on A4 handmade paper.
Exhibitions
click for opening gallery
A choice from the Florilegium
Blue prints, just blue prints
Plants found and photographed in the park and the streets
pure blue cyanotypes
Winter cyanotypes
Botanical toned cyanotypes using madderroot, fenugreek and other tannin-rich plants and seeds.
Printed on handmade Khadi paper they form one artwork, knotted with rope.
Sloterpark
The part of the park that is in postcode area 1064 in Amsterdam
Nine landscape cyanotypes belonging to the Florilegium, knotted with rope to a bigger art work
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