Nature by Design: Botanical Expressions

At the turn of the 20th century, botanical study intersected with design practice...

..and stimulated a prolific celebration of plant forms and structures in furnishings, glassware, ceramics, textiles, and more.

...Christopher Dresser’s (1834–1904)) structural studies of plants...

...Walter Crane’s (1845–1915) fanciful garden illustrations...

Emile Gallé’s (1846–1904) leaf-like carving, and William Morris’s (1834–1896) trellis patterns...

...reveal how nature and design dynamically merged.

As an increasing number of designers trained and taught as botanists...

...they advocated for the beauty and order of nature’s systems, colors, and patterns.

Many manufacturers operated in proximity to gardens for natural study...

...and stocked books of botanical illustration as resources for their designers’ creative processes.

Here, examples of such primary sources, written by and for the use of designers, are on loan from Smithsonian Libraries...

...and appear next to the objects they influenced.

Since the 19th century, the garden has held symbolic weight as a refuge from industry and a natural source of plenty and pleasure.

Designers’ deliberate expressions of nature decades ago and their continued uses of nature today encourage an ever-relevant reflection on the vital role of nature within our world.

Designers consulted botanical texts at the studio and made watercolor sketches...

...to devise life-like enameling schemes.

...and were conveniently complicated motifs to disguise flaws and imperfections...

...in the delicate porcelain and transparent glaze.

Louis C. Tiffany was a landscape designer and gardener who studied plant life extensively in all its seasonal variety...

... and stages of evolution.

At Laurelton Hall, his Long Island, New York estate, Tiffany cultivated a wide variety of plants, from common field species to exotics. He was outspoken on the richness of nature as a design resource.

Laurelton Hall burned down in 1957, and surviving fixtures were acquired by the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, where many are currently on display.

Tiffany made a series of vases inspired by a range of flowering plant species...

...but with modern forms.

When grouped together, these flower vases create a garden for the indoors.

His interest in science merged with fantasy to create illustrations of floral fairy worlds.

Like many of the pre-Raphaelites he admired, Walter Crane favored mythological subjects.

Flora, the goddess of flowers, whose retinue is featured here, had been depicted in botanical and horticultural books since the 16th century.

By the 19th century, a personified Flora no longer appeared in scientific texts, yet the goddess and her myths continued as favorite subjects for Victorian artists and designers.

Like many Arts and Crafts designers, William Morris’s daughter May Morris believed that good work must be inspired by nature but not be imitative of it.

Although May Morris’s wallpapers were generally well received, she dedicated her efforts entirely to embroidery after completing this last wallpaper design.

The name Arcadia refers to an imagined pastoral ideal in which humans live in harmony with nature, seen here through the balanced composition of hawthorn leaves overlain with flowers.

Rambles through the surrounding area sparked a profusion of floral designs, including that shown here.

This period also marked the beginning of Morris’s interest in natural dyes.