SOWING THE SEEDS
The avant-garde approach to flower arranging pioneered by Constance Spry continues to inspire and delight today’s floral designers. By Charlotte Brook
A new exhibition reveals how the fearless, free-loving Constance Spry revolutionised the floristry conventions of her day
Do whatever you please, follow your own star; be original if you want to be and don’t if you don’t want to be,’ wrote Constance Spry in 1953. ‘Open your mind to every form of beauty.’
Encouraging, free-thinking, yet no-nonsense. These words of advice perfectly encapsulate the outlook of the legendary flower decorator, teacher and author who embraced contradiction and broke convention with a somewhat characteristic elegance. These qualities may explain Spry’s recent renaissance in the public imagination: her trademark inclusion of vegetable fronds and hedgerow fruits in bouquets have become an essential element of any contemporary sculptural creation; the low-slung white Fulham Pottery vases she designed proliferate on Instagram and in fashionable florists’ windows; the designer Jonathan Anderson repeatedly pays homage to her aesthetic; and the sumptuous, pale-pink Rosa ‘Constance Spry’, David Austin’s original cultivar, has never been more popular. Little wonder that the Garden Museum is dedicating an exhibition to this floral pioneer and unexpected feminist role model this spring.
Born in Derby in 1886, the young Constance Fletcher studied nursing, married James Marr,
a mine manager, and settled in County Kilkenny, where she lectured on first aid and helped to run the Irish Red Cross as a young woman. During World War I, she fled from her unhappy marriage, moving to London, where she fell in love with Henry Spry, a civil servant, and eventually became the headmistress of a school in Hackney. Yet acquaintances soon recognised her natural flair for flowers, commissioning Spry to do arrangements in their cinema foyers and perfumeries. She decided in 1928 to open a shop in Pimlico called Flower Decoration, where her revolutionary approach to the art, unhampered by formal training, made it a roaring success. Under her watch, foliage flowed, freeform: ‘You don’t want to turn your flower arrangement into a geometry lesson’ was one mantra. ‘Always leave room for the butterflies, dear’ was another. However, her most groundbreaking move was to be, as observed by the writer Beverley Nichols, ‘the first florist who ever walked straight from the herbaceous border to the cabbage patch’. Audaciously, she would mingle rhubarb leaves, kale, berries, pussy willow and lichen-encrusted sprigs with peonies and sweet peas.
By 1936, her thriving studio had 70 staff and, a year later, the Duke of Windsor asked her to do the flowers for his marriage to Wallis Simpson. Subsequently, the young Princess Elizabeth called on Spry not only to oversee her own wedding garlands, but later, in 1953, those at her coronation, too. The energetic entrepreneur took it in her stride, delivering show-stopping patriotic symphonies of English lily-of-the-valley, Scottish stephanotis, Welsh orchids and Northern Irish carnations. The floral palette was all white – a chic floral fashion spearheaded by Spry that is still going strong today. As the renowned florist Nikki Tibbles puts it, ‘She was a woman way ahead of her time.’
This was true of her private life as much as her work, which makes the esteem in which she was held by high society particularly refreshing. Her ‘husband’ Henry Spry had never technically divorced his former wife, but Constance took his name. Both had dalliances, he with her studio employee, she with Hannah ‘Gluck’ Gluckstein, the painter who immortalised several Spry confections on canvas.
And while the former nurse became a darling of the aristocracy, her desire to teach and better the lives of others never left her. At Winkfield Place, the country house she bought near Windsor, she founded a domestic-science school to empower young ladies with practical know-how, and wrote 12 books, with a readership of ‘the everywoman’ in mind. Simple Flowers: a Millionaire for a Few Pence democratised floristry, demonstrating how clever use of single stems, field-foraged blossom and jam jars can bring joy to any windowsill.
In fact, even when crafting money-no-object concoctions for the wealthy, Spry eschewed the customary ornate vases and epergnes for alternative vessels such as soapstone urns, kitchen tureens, fish poachers, bird cages and other junk-shop delights. As for her Fulham Pottery containers, they were structured to facilitate her signature loose, informal clusters. The plantsman Charlie Mccormick appreciates his both for their practicality and the personality behind them. ‘They hold cut stems or planted bulbs beautifully, and are also handsome standing alone,’ he explains. ‘But I love Spry most for the way she lived in the moment, whether in terms of flowers, or her personal life.’ It is this blend of the personal and professional that Shane Connolly, the florist behind the Cambridges’ wedding flowers and co-curator of the forthcoming Spry exhibition, hopes to convey in the show. ‘Constance was a social revolutionary, entrepreneur and a doyenne of design,’ he says. ‘In Ireland, she taught mothers in poverty how to wash their babies: she may have later overseen Royal pageants, but she always saw “home skills” as holistic, and took how much they could improve women’s lives very seriously.’
From bandages to bouquets, Spry’s career proves that a sense of duty and beauty really can complement one another. This splendid woman of flowering genius died in 1960 having slipped on some steps, still full of plans and ideas. Her supposed last words? ‘Someone else can arrange this.’ ‘Constance Spry and the Fashion for Flowers’ is at the Garden Museum (www.gardenmuseum.org.uk) from 14 April until 5 September.
SPRY ESCHEWED THE CUSTOMARY ORNATE VASES FOR ALTERNATIVE VESSELS SUCH AS BIRD CAGES