Practical Research - Flower Pressing

Purpose:

As this project is very personal to me, I wanted to approach it in a way that I find most appropriate. I don't want to use a lot, if any, imagery that I didn't create myself or isn't from my family as although this is a publication based on millions of refugees, my aim is to approach this topic in a unique way and to also represent my family members who have migrated or have become refugees due to the war.

Therefore, after establishing a definite theme of flora/fauna as this is a reminder of the human nature of migration, I decided to recreate Syrian flora using flora found in England as a way of uniting the two. Flower presses are generally beautiful, bringing to light the positives that come with welcoming migrants, immigrants and refugees and also the idea of "flourishing" with new communities.

Method:

https://www.proflowers.com/blog/how-to-press-flowers

I know how to flower press in the most basic sense - leaving a plant within a heavy book for a week. However, I didn't want to wait a week for leaves and petals to dry out therefore I googled methods that would be much quicker and the one I found to seem most effective is using an iron's heat to dry it out. This is most accessible to me, and I think is most protective of the outcome of the dried flowers in comparison to putting them in the microwave which I believe would just damage them or possibly burn them as there's no protective layer.

My Process:

On the walk home, I collected many flora that resemble the flowers native to Syria I've picked out in my research and also a few that I thought could be used for developing more imagery such as the berries and harder plants.

I laid the plants out on cartridge paper, and thin cardboard as they're both absorbent which is important as when pressing with an iron, the liquid needs to be drawn out and not steamed.

I then laid tissues on top as a precautionary method as I wasn't certain of how absorbent the cardboard was, and wanted to absorb as much as possible before ironing to avoid the steaming situation.

I then placed a heavy book and waited 10-15 minutes to make sure the plants are flattened in good shape rather than ironing in folds or jagged edges.

The colour of these Firethorns would be very interesting if pressed as they're such a vibrant red that could relate to the Syrian flag however when testing if it could be pressed to be dried out, the skin just disintegrated and therefore I left all of the berries or harder plants to be used for developing other imagery or just for photography.

After pressing with a book for 10-15 minutes, I placed another cartridge paper above the plants as a protective and absorbent layer, then began ironing in intervals. 

Some of the plants, especially leaves dried out almost immediately whereas thicker foliage and petals took until the next day however this was still a much more time-efficient way to dry out flora. It does have its downsides as some of the plants, especially those leaves, didn't react too well to the heat however I think the pattern can be used to an advantage.

Overall this process was really successful and I'm very happy with how time-efficient it was as it will allow me to make more dry presses efficiently when needed.