Cathy's Art Diary

Elegant exhibition at the Garden Museum looking at the life and work of Constance Spry, the floral designer. This show was very cleverly designed to tell and show a lot in a small space even if, at times, it felt a bit cramped in these Covid times. Good use was made of show style display cases and innovative ways of showing objects. I was pleased I had done a talk by the curator before I went as sometimes the storytelling was a bit confusing due to the information board placing, The show covered the whole of her life from helping to set up mother and baby clinics in Ireland before the First World War, through running a day school until finally being discovered as a flower arranger in the late 1920s. She went on to become a fashionable designer doing a number of royal and society weddings and even doing the floral designs for the Coronation. She was also a great business woman, having products designed and produced by manufacturers such as the Fulham Pottery and endorsing other i...

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...