Recently we have been asked a lot about artificial flowers for restaurants, casinos and receptions. So I thought I would write a bit about them
Artificial, faux, silk, fake there are so many words for them, some better than others! So I though I would look up artificial flowers on the internet and found out a bit of interesting info from the good old Wikipedia
or a bit of it here...
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.
So artificial flowers have been around for a pretty long time and like with a lot of things with time the quality of the product has been dramatically improved!
People still have a misconception that artificial flowers aren't very nice, look plastic and sit in the corner of a room gathering dust. Only one of these is still true! They will gather dust and there's not much even the most revolutionary scientist can do about that!
Now though the quality of artificial flowers can be quite amazing ! There are many great artificial flowers producers in the UK such as Blooms (www.blooms.uk.com) and Ruckleys (www.ruckley.com). At In Bloom we sell some of Ruckley flowers but also have some of the flowers that we buy from a wholesalers in the market. They are slightly cheaper (in price) but really very good and can be used to create the most amazing arrangements. As seen!
