THE cuckoo’s call has long since faded, skylarks swoop and rise in their vertical dance and the first hay has been neatly rolled. In the woods, lanky foxgloves have shed their purple outerwear and, throughout the land, gardeners are attempting to quench an ever-increasing thirst. However, within the flower press, time stands still. Unscrewing the tightly wound wing nuts with the trepidation of a ceramicist opening a kiln, I gently lift the layers of card and paper. The past season rests here: daisies, dandelions, wood anemone, primroses and bluebells sleep on the pages.
Flower pressing is an ancient craft that involves flattening blooms and leaves to remove the moisture. The pressed matter can then be preserved on paper, behind glass, within resin and so on for the purposes of both art and science. One of the best reasons to take up flower pressing is that you don’t need any special kit—although plenty exists, if you get the bug (more on that later). A couple of heavy-duty hardbacks will do the job. In Pressed Flower Craft (1980), Joyce Fenton—past doyenne of flower pressing and founder of the Pressed Flower Guild—outlines how to use a telephone directory as a press, recommending allowing at least 12 pages per pressing.
Esta historia es de la edición August 26, 2020 de Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
