Cape Town Floriography
Nowseum
"Cape Town Floriography is a public history and art project that takes place at various flower markets in Cape Town on Heritage Day, 24 September 2016." - Nowseum Blog
About Cape Town Floriography
Cape Town Floriography, a Nowseum project by Melanie Boehi, explores the fascinating history and influence of the flower sellers of Cape Town. The first installation was developed as a series of posters exhibited as flower wrapping papers.
"For long flower sellers have used newspaper sheets to wrap up flowers. Old newspaper was thereby given a second life. Cape Town Floriography is inspired by this recycling of newspaper, however it changes the direction of the cycle by producing a new paper that can only be read once the flowers are unpacked."
- Nowseum blog
About the Design
When Melanie approached me with the task of designing a poster to use as flower wrapping, I loved
the idea. This was the perfect medium to exhibit this story, a history that most Cape Townians don't know about - even though most of them see these flower sellers daily. There was no set brief in terms of aesthetic, other than it being a black and white print, which allowed me to put some ideas forward. While experimenting, I discovered that the borders and edges of the paper would be the most visible part when wrapped. I passed the idea of illustrating a detailed flower border to Melanie who loved the idea so much that she used the border for the entire poster series.
To learn more about Cape Town Floriography, visit the Nowseum blog and read all about this wonderful project and the rich history of flower sellers in Cape Town!
Cape Town Floriography 2018
Storytelling in the language of flowers
Storytelling in the language of flowers is a multi-genre project which brings together an interdisciplinary group of people to develop new forms of storytelling in response to the multiple political and ecological crises of our time. Focusing on plants and their people in Cape Town, it brings forth stories about place, history and belonging; stories which root us in the past and prepare the soil from which more just futures can grow. Inspired by communicative practices with flowers of both plants and people, it mixes methods and forms developed in the arts, natural sciences and humanities to not only showcase the beauty of plants, but to further explore the complex entanglements of human and more-than-human life worlds, research hopeful emerging ecologies and add critical layers to current discussions of the Anthropocene.
Read more on the Nowseum website here.
About the Design
The latest poster in the series speaks about the history of flower research and plant collection in Cape Town and was required to feature 3 herbarium sheets from Kew Gardens.
To be able to accommodate all the information as well as feature the herbarium sheets, I needed to come up with a tight layout plan that would be easily legible, would showcase the detail in the herbarium sheets and have an interesting composition when viewed from a distance.
Deep etching the elements of the herbarium sheets and converting them to greyscale I found created the best use of space and suited the style of the posters. To maximise space I shaped the text to fit between the herbarium sheet etchings instead of having standard, rectangular paragraphs.
To learn more about Cape Town Floriography, visit the Nowseum blog and read all about this wonderful project and the rich history of flower sellers in Cape Town!
