Preserving Nature's Verses
By: Alexandra Anith Střelcová
Photo: Mark Cocksedge
Historia of herbaria
Preserving plants for research or leisure is an ancient tradition that dates back centuries. The first attempts to create a modern-day hortus siccus (Latin for a “dry garden”), were then created by disciples of Luca Ghini, the Italian doctor and botanist who also happens to have founded the world’s first botanic gardens at the University of Pisa in 1544. The herbaria created in the past are of great scientific value today as they bear witness to changes in vegetation over time. Plus, they preserve precious specimens for future generations. This process is inherent to Lasvit’s Herbarium, too. Mária Čulenová Hostinová, the company’s senior designer, originally came up with the concept walking in the eerie woods that surround Lasvit’s North Bohemian glassworks. Together with Petra Dicková and Štěpán Gudev, they experimented with foraged twigs of rose hips and thistles, eventually developing a unique technique that allows for the plants to be preserved in moulded glass.
Plants and Glass
In Emanuele Coccia’s book The Life of Plants, he alludes to the fact that plants don’t have hands with which to shape the world, yet it would be hard to find more capable agents when it comes to the construction of forms. Every time Herbarium comes to life, plants are indeed the agents shaping the forms of individual pieces as molten glass is poured onto them, effectively reducing the vegetals to ashes. But since glass, too, essentially originates from nature, this moment represents a fragile, intimate connection between the two organic substances. As one gradually vanishes, the other moulds a distinctive shape around the remnants of the former, leaving nature’s eternal imprint in the final artwork.
Herbarium at the Sketch
Last September, as part of the London Design Festival, Herbarium found a tem¬porary home in Sketch, London’s exquisite fine-dining venue reigned by the legendary chef Pierre Gagnaire. In one of its sections known as the Glade, Mária and her team imagined an enchanting yet intricate composition: spanning four by six metres, the instal¬lation consisted of 240 externally lit gilded components, carefully mounted one by one in a process not dissimilar to that of writing poetry. To celebrate the launch of Herbarium at the Glade, Sketch even created an eponymous cocktail, presented with a skeleton of a real magnolia leaf as garnish.
Ultimately, Herbarium leaves us with a rather philosophical question: what else do you actually preserve alongside a few leaves and branches? Find out more in the print issue.
