Georgian or Victorian? 

I made an honest mistake. I relied on my memory. Memory of an aging brain is even more tricky to rely on. I should have known. However, age caught up with me and I displayed an uncharacteristic bravado. As a result, I ended up creating a novel floral arrangement.

Is that what is needed to be creative? To not rely on memory and rely on what you think is your memory? Maybe mixing up is being creative or maybe retrieval gone awry is being creative? I am sure the Nobel laureates and all the brilliant minds I have met will vehemently differ from me. Or perhaps they won't!

Well, here is the entire story.

I was reading about the different European styles across time that have influenced flower arrangements. And I came across the Georgian Period and the Victorian Period styles. And I read about styles and designs that were popular in those times and the purposes they served. This time I consciously tried to select a floral style that I might bring to the AI century. There were several temptations, but none were practical.

The Dutch-Flemish styles of bouquets captivated me. Lush and overflowing, they were in some of the paintings I had seen in the art galleries and museums. My rational brain chided me, ‘Totally impractical!’ Where was I going to keep this massive bouquet, even if I created one? And likely it will be just one bouquet. I gave up that idea.

Nosegays from the Georgian Period, thrilled me because they were miniature and because of the word itself. I found the word inappropriate in the era of 'them/their' pronouns. Tussie-mussies is the modern word for Nosegays. I found that word inappropriate as well and my brain ran in all sorts of directions until I read the true meaning of the term. It represents a combination of a bunch of flowers and moss. Tussie-mussie was one other impractical option to recreate. How will the flowers survive? Maybe they were not supposed to survive. Was I supposed to toss the flowers in a day or after an event? It is such a waste of beauty. And there were no events worth tussie-mussies today. I saw the tussie-mussie being tossed out, in my mind’s eye.

Then I obsessed over feathers, lace, and ribbons. These belonged to the Victorian era. The concept of props in a floral arrangement attracted me. Feathers seemed easier than laces to adorn a bouquet. No feather, in my mind, is more beautiful than a peacock feather. I imagined the peacock plumage, in all its glory, unfurled as the clouds gathered. There was no looking back. My flower arrangement will have peacock feathers; I decided with a finality.

 When it comes to doing things, it is very different than reading about them. Writing about the things done is way different too; it has the element of an audience and imagination. So, the dynamic changes when writing. Anyway, I started arranging peacock feathers in a flat bowl base (thanks to the Ikebana vase collection) on a floral foam (yikes). And before I knew it, I created a fan-shaped design with feathers as a focal point.

Now in my mind, I was creating a Georgian-era fan-shaped floral arrangement. I forgot it had feathers there. And worse, my mind thought feathers were featured in the Georgian era styles. For the longest time, I thought I was trying to build something from the Georgian era. But it did not look anything from the Georgian era. Heck, it did not look like any era from Europe. It looked oriental, ornate, and impractical.

This was not what I was aiming for. Search as I would, I could not find any references or images of how feathers were used in Georgian-era floral arrangements. How could I? There were none probably. I found Great Gatsby-inspired floral arrangements in black and ostrich feathers, but they were no help with my little design. Besides the Gatsby era is separated by continents, culture, and a couple of centuries. It was an honest, creative mistake.

Critically, the spread of feathers makes the arrangement look attractive and plush. The color of peacock feathers overpowers all flowers. However, the bright-colored rose stands up to the peacock feathers because of its size and color. If I ever recreated this design, the ugly foam will be covered or something else, that is more eco-friendly, will be used as a base, which will also nurture the cut flowers.

I would like to use moss to cover the foam. There we go again. Bringing in mussie, consciously but only in imagination this time, to modify the creative process. Maybe there is more to creativity than just encoding, storage, and retrieval of memory gone wrong.