Naturally enough this title immediately meant (to me) a style in the horizontal design standard. In general terms this requires all placements to be in the horizontal plane.
The structure is made from two “duck feet” supporting two lengths of gymea lily stems (Doryanthes excelsor). The method for making these feet is a variation on the spider webbing technique – I will have a step by step on this site soon.
Banksia flowers have a tendency to appear at right angles to the stem which sometimes makes them difficult to use in a design, however, for this design it worked perfectly. By placing the stems vertically into covered vials, the flowers provide a strong visual horizontal line that reflects the line of the gymea stalks.
The foliage of the lighter banksia flower also has some horizontal line placement, more good luck than good placement as they are still attached to the main stem!
The foliage of the orange banksia flower is most definitely vertical – this should have been removed. The large gymea lily leaf is placed purposely at the diagonal angle. Just me, pushing the boundaries of interpretation again….I thought this was a clever way to show one of the placements being “horizontally challenged). I will add here that some others in the competition did vertical designs that were cut in half as their interpretation, so I wasn’t on my own!
This design placed third.
Judges comments: A clear horizontal line with placements and supporting structure. The vertical foliage is distracting and detracts from the horizontal lines. More placement of large foliage (as with the gymea leaf) to the ends of the gymea stalks would have enhanced the horizontal line and brought the design together more fully.
