September 16, 2024
New Exhibit: The Language of Flowers
By Kat Lewis, Special Projects Curator
Enjoy the changing seasons with Special Collections through our annual lobby exhibit, The Language of Flowers. Each quarter will feature new material related to our botanical collections, local plants, and more. Launching September 2024 for the year.
Flowers, their language, poetry, and sentiment, with choicest extracts from poets, a dictionary of the sentiment of every flower, botanical descriptions, &c.
1871; Philadelphia, Porter & Coates
Plants make us happier and improve our environment, so this year we are bringing the cheer of the outdoors into the basement of Suzzallo-Allen with our botanical and plant related collection items. From time immemorial, plants, flowers and trees have been a subject of interest across diverse areas of study. From scientists, to poets, sociologists and philosophers, the meaning we place upon our photosynthesizing friends is ubiquitous and comforting. We as humans possess an innate need to seek connection with other forms of life, so even as urban environments grow and technology changes, our fascination with the natural world never ceases.
The exhibit title comes from floriography, a means of communication through the use or arrangement of flowers. This practice was extremely popular in Victorian England and the US as a way of outwardly flirting or communicating impolite topics through code. In Japan, Hanakotoba was also a popular form of storytelling and emoting through the expressive arrangement of flowers.
Icones of the essential forest trees of Hokkaido Miyabe, Kingo, 1860-1950, 1920-1932; Sapporo Hokkaido government
The Fairy princess Foster, Anne,1977
The century book of gardening : a comprehensive work for every lover of the garden, edited by E.T. Cook; 1900
Every quarter the material in the exhibit will rotate according to the seasons, showcasing the autumnal leaves, winter terrane, spring blossoms and summer produce. Through these rotations we hope to convey the breadth of information in Special Collections about botanical life, gardening, and connection to the natural world from the Pacific Northwest and documented in our collections.
If you are a fan of book bindings and historical cover design, come check out the section on Margaret Armstrong, a prolific 19th and early 20th century book cover designer, illustrator and author. Her work is strongly associated with botanical imagery, her illustrations influencing Art Nouveau, and her having written and researched a comprehensive guide to the wildflowers of the American West, Field Book of Western Wild Flowers. Her book and many of her covers will be featured throughout the run of the exhibit.
Image: Cascade PBS.org
We are excited to host several events this year related to the exhibit including a talk by Taha Ebrahimi, author of Street Trees of Seattle (date to be announced soon!). Keep an eye on the Special Collections and Libraries’ events calendars and social media accounts for information on upcoming events. Additionally, you can see a selection of digitized materials from the exhibit and find the entire object list through our digital exhibit.
University of Washington Libraries’ Special Collections collects, preserves and makes accessible the Libraries most rare and unique holdings, including rare books, manuscripts, papers, records, photographs, moving images, ephemera, architectural drawings and more. Students, faculty and the community come to Special Collections from all over the world for primary sources that are integral to their research.
If you have questions or want to make an appointment to see a particular exhibit item up close, we encourage you to make a reading room appointment in Special Collections or email us at speccoll@uw.edu.
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