Artificial flowers made from plastic.

Artificial flowers are imitations of natural flowering plants, used for commercial or residential decoration. They are sometimes made for scientific purposes (the collection of glass flowers at Harvard University, for example, which illustrates the flora of the United States.)

Materials used in their manufacture have included painted linen and shavings of stained horn in Egypt, gold and silver in ancient Rome, rice-paper in China, silkworm cocoons in Italy, colored feathers in South America, and also wax and tinted shells. Modern techniques involve carved or formed soap, nylon netting stretched over wire frames, ground clay, and mass-produced injection plastic mouldings. Polyester is the major material for manufacturing of artificial flowers since 1970s. Most artificial flowers in the market nowadays are made of polyester fabrics.

Production

The industry is now a highly specialized one with several different manufacturing processes. Hundreds of artificial flower factories in the Pearl River delta area of Guangdong province in China have been built since the early 1980s. Thousands of 40 ft containers of polyester flowers and plants are exported to almost all countries every year.

Polyester and paper

Paper flowers

Five main processes may be distinguished:

• The first step consists of puttig the polyester fabric in gelatine in order to stiffen it.
• The second consists of cutting up the various polyester fabrics and materials employed into shapes suitable for forming the leaves, petals, etc.; this may be done with scissors, but more often with stamps that can cut through a dozen or more thicknesses at one blow.
• The veins of the leaves are next impressed by means of a dye, silk screen printing and the petals are given their natural rounded forms by goffering irons of various shapes.
• The next step is to assemble the petals and other parts of the flower, which is built up from the center outwards;
  

  

  Flower bouquet with prepared rose blossoms and silk flowers
• The fifth is to mount the flower on a stalk of brass or iron wire wrapped with suitably colored material, and to add the leaves to complete the spray.

Paper and cloth flowers are also made with origami.

Today the major material used in artificial flower production is polyester fabric

Nylon Stocking Flowers

The art of nylon flower making is an easy to learn craft which uses simple tools and inexpensive material to achieve stunning results. Nylon flower making enjoyed a brief popularity in the United States in the '70s and soon became very popular in Japan. In recent years, the crafts popularity has spread Asia, Europe and Australia. With the onset of new colors and materials, the art has expanded to infinite new possibilities of nylon flower making.

The basic materials needed to make nylon flowers include: wire, stem wire, nylon stocking, nylon threading, floral tape and stamen. Some flowers require cotton balls or sheets (or you can use batting), white glue, acrylic paint and paint brushes.

(Source from book [1] The Art of Handmade Flowers)

Silk Flowers

Silk Flowers are crafted from silk materials which make the flowers and the entire plant look more life-like. These days’ silk flowers make use of a real touch technique which gives the plant a fairly realistic look.

Silk Flowers have gained a tremendous amount of popularity in the United States due to their fire retardant feature. Fire retardant silk flowers have to sustain commonly cited fire tests NFPA 701 and the ASTM E84.

Soap

There are two methods:

• Carved: A bar with layered colored soap is mounted in a lathe, and circular grooves are chiseled into it. The finished flower is symmetric and regular, but the flowers are not identical and can be called handmade.
• Molded: An oil-less soap milled to a powder is mixed with water, and the paste is used as a modelling material. Leaf and petal textures are stamped or rolled onto the soap. This is an expensive, labour-intensive process.

Clay

Clay flowers are made by hand from special air-dry polymer clay or cold porcelain, steel wire, paint, glue, tape and sometimes paper and foam as a filler. With the help of cutters, where each flower has its own cutter set, the parts are cut from the still soft clay and then formed with specially designed tools. After drying, these parts are when needed, painted with necessary precision and then very precisely assembled into a whole flower. Clay flowers when made by a skillful artisan can be very realistic. This art is very popular in Thailand, from there it has spread to Europe, Russia and the US.

Glass

Flowers made of glass are typically more stylized and contemporary. Glass is melted and blown by hand into the shapes of the flower. Working with glass at high temperatures to form the flower is very difficult which is why glass flowers are much more expensive than typical artificial flowers.

Plastic

Injection moulding is used for mass manufacture of plastic flowers. Plastic is injected into a preformed metal die.

Simulacraceae

The journal Ethnobotany Research and Applications has published a tongue-in-cheek paper that claims to be the culmination of a six-year project in the exhaustive taxonomy of artificial plants, and lumped the group into a single family called the Simulacraceae ("the family of simulated plants"). [2] A condensed version of this article has also appeared in the Annals of Improbable Research [3]

References

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