‘Flower pressing, isn’t that really easy?’ was what my boyfriend said when I told him I was off to a flower pressing workshop for a friend’s hen party. Like him I could remember doing it as a child, putting stems between pieces of paper and sandwiching them in heavy books. There’s something quite lovely about revisiting this art as a grown up, especially in the surroundings of Peacock Yard, where JamJar Flowers have their studio. The cobbled street was built in Victorian times as a space for makers’ and artisans – musical instruments were made here and still are today. It is an ideal space for a florist, with an atmosphere of creativity and space to spread out.
Up in the workshop tables are set out with flower presses, blotting paper and scissors and jars of flowers are scattered about; red poppies, nasturtium leaves, buttercups, love-in-a-mist, cornflowers. The JamJar experts have pressed flowers professionally for hundreds of jobs – to create 2000 invitations to a Mulberry fashion show, to make spectacular window dislays at Sketch and to make their own JamJar Edit products. This means they’re able to give plenty of tips on technique – like the perils of pressing anything with too much moisture (daffodils or tulips for example) and how to layer up your press evenly. You then get to work adding stems to your wooden flower press that is yours to take home after the class.
Blue Peter-style you’re then given some stems they have pressed earlier to create cards on Indian paper – learning how to fix your flowers and about the various things you could do with them. We’re going to try and make a lampshade having seen a picture of their beautiful example. Pressing flowers is quite easy, and that is the whole joy of it. Anyone can do it, and as Melissa says, ‘the flowers are the art, so you don’t even have to be arty to be any good at it.’ These workshops are great fun and give you everything you need to spend the summer pressing flowers.
Upcoming workshops at Peacock Yard:
14th July, 6pm; 28th July, 2pm; 18th August, 2pm; 15th September, 6pm and 29th September, 2pm.
A Little Bird Loves
