Fern & flower pressing
Flower pressing workshops held at Howick Historical Village recently revived a popular Victorian pastime.
Participants explored the gardens in beautiful late summer, learning what to pick for the best results, then got to work in the parlour of historic Puhi Nui homestead.
A favourite hobby of the Victorian era, flowers and foliage were pressed and preserved as keepsakes, displayed in albums or used as embellishments. Queen Victoria herself was a keen practitioner, filling albums from age 15 well into her 80s. These contained floral mementos of special occasions and visits, as well as intimate walks with loved ones.
When picked at the right time, and pressed between pages in a heavy book or a press, specimens are fully preserved once dry. If stored in a humidity free environment, they will keep for centuries.
One notable object in the Society’s collection is an 1870s professionally bound book of pressed fern cuttings by Auckland entrepreneur and publisher Eric Craig. A keen botanist he set up a ‘curiosity shop’ on Princes Street (near the site of the original Auckland Museum) as a dealer of natural history and ethnography.
Trading in shells, kauri gum, pounamu and taonga he had suppliers all over the country and travelled widely collecting botanical samples. Known as ‘The Fern Man,’ his books tapped into the Victorian craze for cultivating, displaying and collecting ferns known as ‘pteridomania’.
One notable object in the Society’s collection is an 1870s professionally bound book of pressed fern cuttings by Auckland entrepreneur and publisher Eric Craig.
A keen botanist he set up a ‘curiosity shop’ on Princes Street (near the site of the original Auckland Museum) as a dealer of natural history and ethnography.
Trading in shells, kauri gum, pounamu and taonga he had suppliers all over the country and travelled widely collecting botanical samples. Known as ‘The Fern Man,’ his books tapped into the Victorian craze for cultivating, displaying and collecting ferns known as ‘pteridomania’.
There was a voracious appetite to understand plants and the natural world, inspired by new fields of science emerging and leisure time increasing. Amateur scientific study became a recreational pursuit of the middle class, and they brought these curiosities into their living rooms!
Indeed, Victorian parlours were crammed with palms and plants, displayed alongside inanimate objects like fossils, shells, and feathers.
Wardian cases, transportable glasshouses invented in London in 1829, allowed tropical plants to flourish in mini ecosystems for the observation and delight of those who tended to them.
Snapped up by late 19th century tourists to New Zealand and foreign collectors, Craig’s pressed fern books opened new worlds to their eager spectators. In the drawing rooms of Europe, people could tangibly experience the strange botanical wonders of the Pacific subtropics.
Yet, while the books have a scientific impetus, and some of the specimens are labelled with their botanical names, many are not identified, and no written information is provided. Instead, fern sprigs, curling tendrils and bits of moss mix together in strange, striking, artistic arrangements.
Page after page of specimens are presented in this way, with no sense of their original geographic locations or ecosystems. The aesthetics of arrangements and collection displays were the artistic side of a seemingly scientific inquiry, practised as much by professional botanists as ladies in their floral albums and scrapbooks.
To hear about flower pressing workshops and other public programmes at the Village keep an eye on the website or sign up for the newsletter at www.historicalvillage.org.nz/newsletter.
