The author has an art and design background and it shows. There are no cookie-cutter bland arrangements here. They're beautiful, well curated, and in a number of styles. The tutorials are very specific and include materials lists which include the flowers and species used. These are -not- all easily sourced. To recreate the arrangements from the book, the reader must either live in an area with a large flower market and/or be a keen gardener with a large cutting garden. Even so, some materials will need to be sourced elsewhere since the growing conditions for the items used in the arrangements run the gamut from temperate to tropical. The arrangements themselves run the gamut from traditional to avant garde. The author's sense of color is flawless. There are arrangements here which would look perfectly at home painted into a renaissance masterpiece. They're arranged thematically. The ebook version includes an interactive table of contents and index. I especially enjoyed the chapter heading quotes. They're also very well curated with an eclectic mix of artists, philosophers, and cultural icons included.
So many of us today live in relatively sterile surroundings, boxed in and with very little contact with the natural world. This book allows the reader to get a dose of nature up close as well as providing an outlet for creativity. There also seem to be very few modern books written about flower arrangement and the cut flower aesthetic. This book fills that niche quite well. Even if the reader isn't planning on recreating the arrangements in the tutorials identically, there's a lot of material here which can be adapted to the reader's purpose and available materials.
The weakest element of the entire book for me was the cover which (to me) looks cluttered and chaotic. The black anthuriums used in the cover arrangements are darned cool though.
Four stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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