Human Flower Project

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Whatever Happened to Norman Spannon?

Calling out a history of daring designers.

Arrangement by Norman Spannon, 1962

Photo: National Archive of Australia

Is there a Department of Florists History? If not, we’d like to create one right here at the Human Flower Project, to learn more about designers of the past.

This ephemeral art form has been a fairly anonymous one, too. And there is definitely power in anonymity: when ideas and methods aren’t owned, bought and sold, they have a way of sluicing through cultures with ease. Further, there is something basically repugnant about turning shapes and color combinations into “intellectual property,” though increasingly people are attempting just such antics.

Several days ago we ran across this photo in the National Archives of Australia, an intriguing arrangement of “dried Australian Streletzia” flowers. Who would have thought of drying Bird of Paradise blooms? Norman Spannon, that’s who? But who was (or is) Norman Spannon? This arrangement, from 1962, looks daringly “modern.” We find it marvelously sculptural, almost fiery.  And check that dramatic lighting—enough to turn Martha Stewart’s hair jet black.

In the days and weeks to come, we welcome visitors, especially our florist friends, to send us photos of daring, original or otherwise memory-making designs, with as much or as little information as you may have. For the purposes of our history project, we’re especially interested to see designs, say, pre-1972—that’s the year Miss Vicki and Tiny Tim were married on the Johnny Carson Show amid 10,000 tulips and seems a reasonable milestone in the popular culture of flowers.

So .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and tales.  We’re eager to learn more about the florists, famous or “anonymous,” of the past and do some singing about these unsung artist/craftspeople.