Still Life With Fall: Making Art from Flowers and Fruits

Richly colored autumn blooms and luscious harvest fruits burst forth from a pedestal urn in this dramatic update to a classical look.

Excerpted from Fresh Flower Arranging
Filed under: Fall, Flowers, Color, Vases, Fruit Plants

Fall Fantasy Resembles Still Life Painting

Inspired by 18th-century works of art, this sumptuous display of autumn blooms and harvest fruits looks almost like a still life painting. The abundance of lilies, roses, crocosmia, rudbeckia, smokebush, bull rushes and wired fruits is given a dramatic flourish by a large traditional pedestal urn, a swathe of deep maroon silk draped around the urn and an intense shot of color from the amaranthus that trails onto the table beside the scattered fruits.

The flared pedestal urn allows the flowers to form a handsome fan shape. Softer flower shapes are used at the edges, while a cluster of fruits in the center draws the eye right in.

Effect

Including fabric, flowers, foliage and exotic fruits like persimmons and kumquats brings a rich and exotic flair, even extravagance, to the design, although most of the individual elements are, in fact, very ordinary.

Fall Fantasy Vase Includes Fruit and Fabric

Color

A palette of typical autumn colors is used to represent this changing season as the leaves outdoors turn from green to fiery oranges, reds and crimsons.