Gallery & Handcrafted Gifts
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Kate Gilmore
Arboretal Artefacts began in a small way.
In the fall of 1991 my husband, John Gilmore, a mathematician temporarily at
loose ends, became intrigued by the spiky brown balls that fell in such
abundance from the sweet gum trees
We both felt, however, that something
besides sweet gum would be an improvement. We found in Central Park and then in
the great New York Botanic Garden a vast cornucopia of cones, seeds and pods.
Within a year our small company was selling its remarkable wreaths to some of New York’s most prominent florists. John experimented constantly and soon was creating a whole new line of topiaries from the same materials. At the same time he was beginning to use exotic botanicals such as devils claws from Australia and the beautiful, dark red pods of the jacaranda tree. We found materials wherever we went, from the flower market to Chinatown where we bought lotus root, winged nuts like ebony angels and many other curious things. I did the marketing by walking from one upscale florist to another with a wreath in one hand and a topiary in the other, a simple-minded strategy that worked very well in the high-flying ‘90s. But when we moved to MetroWest in 2004, we found New Englanders less enthusiastic than New Yorkers about cones, however beautiful and exotic. It was at this point that we turned to what I call “the vegetable kingdom”—gourds, loufa pods, pomegranates, okra, small artichokes, and so forth—all much more colorful than our traditional work. We still have a major, long time client on New York’s upper east side for whom we have recently created yet another line of topiaries and wreaths, which are spray painted gold or silver and covered with a unique, very fine and many-faceted glitter. This product, while we cannot bring ourselves to approve of it, is, in fact, utterly magical.
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Gifts crafted by hand are treasured forever..... |
in
New York’s Riverside Park. He thought they would make a nice wreath, and he
had—who knows why?—a straw wreath form at hand. I agreed that the finished
product was unusual and attractive in a quiet way. 