Phantom Bouquets: Historical and Modern Methods for Skeletonizing Leaves

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ISBN 1-930585-64-0
Retail $11.95 (USD)
77 pp. / Paperback

Skeleton Leaves:

In the mid-1800s, Victorian artists began to imitate a strange and pretty decorative leafwork technique seen in craftwork imported from China. Real leaves, stripped of their green tissue, bleached and arranged in floral arrangements or bouquets, created a new trend; some were even colored to match their original (or even fanciful) appearances. The delicate networking of the leaves resembles the finest lacework.

Today, artists and craftworkers can work with a wide range of shapes and sizes of leaves. Phantom Bouquets includes two early (and easy to read) reprints on this oft-forgotten art, and includes some notes for experimenting with modern ingredients.

This also makes a terrific botany experiment for the examination of a leaf's internal structure.