Handmade Country Crafts Heighten

The Beauty Of Nature

Which handmade country crafts are for you? If you've ever looked longingly at a field of wildflowers in the spring, and wished you could somehow "bottle" all that beauty and preserve it for eternity, then the answer to that question is "pressed flower craft." The practice of preserving flowers and other bits of organic plant matter by flattening them and draining them of moisture, and then displaying them in creative patterns, is not a well-known form of art. Even those who do know know of this traditional craft routinely underestimate how beautiful and impressive the results can be.

Handmade Country Crafts, Drawing, And Flower Arranging

Pressed flower craft is similar to the art of collage. However, instead of images from magazines and newspapers, the pressed flower artists uses flowers and other plant parts. Collage novices imagine that the skill involved in collage is limited to that of finding appealing images and putting them all one surface. Indeed, many middle school teachers in the US have relied on "collage making" as a mindless activity to keep students quiet when they were unable to think up a concrete lesson plan.

However, the real skill of collage is much more involved, and not very different from the skill of painting. The skilled collage artist forms new images out of the colors, textures, and shapes that he or she extracts from pre-existing imagery, such that the original images are almost unrecognizable. Pressed flower craft works the same way. Instead of pictures from magazines, the pressed flower artist uses the strange, translucent, ethereal colors and varied textures of flattened and dried flowers, grasses, and bits of bark as his or her "palette."

Japanese Handmade Country Crafts Made In The USA

The art and craft of making meticulous paintings out of preserved flowers originated in Japan. The Japanese practiced Oshibana art, which evolved into pressed flower art in the USA by way of Victorian Europe. Oshibana art was unique because the images created out of flowers by its practitioners preserved the original beauty of the flowers, by incorporating the flowers' original colors and textures. Indeed, this art heightened the flowers' original beauty--first, because it organized the flowers' beautiful colors, found randomly in nature, in a deliberate and aesthetically pleasing way, and, second, because the drying process often made the flowers' color even more intense than in nature. 

When Europe came into extended contact with Japan during the 19th century, traditional Japanese art started to spread to the European continent. Oshibana became popular among wealthy and middle-class Victorians with artistic inclinations, who could go into the meadows and pick flowers to press. This art form then spread to the US, where it began to be practiced in rural areas. Although not as well-known as traditional American handmade country crafts, such as embroidery, pressed flower craft began to be made in America. Pressed flower "paintings," often showing detailed scenes of nature composed entirely out of dried flowers and bark, are beautiful handmade country crafts, perfect for display in a sunny study or living room.