Constance Spry and the Fashion for Flowers

Lively online lecture from ARTscapades looking at the life and work of the floral decorator, Constance Spry.

Shane Connolly, guest curator for a show on Constance at the Garden Museum and who arranged the flowers for Prince William’s wedding and holds a royal warrant to Prince Charles and the Queen, talked us through Constance’s life and how he chose and acquired the objects in the show. This was a good balance between telling a story and describing how an exhibition was put together.

He took us from her early days in Ireland teaching health care to the poor, through her early failed marriage and her move to London where her skills as a flower arranger were discovered at luncheon parties she held. He then led us though the society and royal wedding which she worked on through to her main event, the Coronation.

Connolly also talked about her as a business woman, looking at how she endorsed products and sold her name in the USA, and how she set up a school to teach household skills in a Georgian House which she used as a training aid and had it renovated by the students. He also touched on her relationship with the female artist Gluck.

This was a refreshing approach from a curator from a non-gallery background and I can’t wait to see the show.

 

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