“For me, windowsill arranging is almost a spiritual practice. When I am looking for materials to display and placing them on the windowsill, I feel more like a poet placing words in a haiku than a floral designer placing stems in a vase. I love the limited space, the double connection to the outdoors (through the window and my materials), and the structure that repeating the same activity over and over provides.” Nancy Ross Hugo, Windowsill Art
I wrote about flowers and flower-themed books this past summer to commemorate the Ohio floral shop I grew up in (we just sold the building where my parents had the business for some fifty years) and to chronicle a renewed desire to have more flowers in my life. When St. Lynn’s Press asked me to review their new book, Windowsill Art, by Nancy Ross Hugo, I was thrilled. There is much, much more to this small, hand-sized book than meets the eye.
Windowsill Art is, first of all, about discovery: using seasonal blossoms and other easily accessible gifts of nature all around us – seedpods, cones, leaves, twigs, foliage, fruits, and vegetables – to make simple, striking designs we can display in the modest spaces of our windowsills.
Secondly, it is windowsill art as artist’s practice. Hugo writes, “Windowsill arranging can be to floral design what pen and ink drawing is to oil painting: a way to strip the art form to its basics and distill the essence of it.”
Nancy compares her windowsill practice to the work of a vegan cookbook author she once heard speak. The cookbook author focused exclusively on vegan cooking even though she was not a vegan. “She limited her universe in order to investigate a small part of it more deeply.” The simple art of windowsill arranging, Hugo writes, can be “a path back to….innocence and [the] beginner’s eye….And it can help focus a lifetime of practice and observation.”
The author is a naturalist and floral designer who, for three years, created floral windowsill art every day and posted photographs of it on her blog, Windowsill Arranging: Creating Nature on the Windowsill. She learned that her work greatly increased her readers’ sense of artistic freedom: techniques and ideas they hadn’t thought of before opened up new creative paths and possibilities.
Hugo offers instruction in how to find plant material and choose containers; ways to explore the process, including combining and shuffling materials and letting arrangements evolve; and experimenting with styles and techniques. She is suggestive and encouraging; there are no hard and fast rules. Nancy wants you to feel artistically uninhibited, free to try new things. Windowsill Art is generously photographed, featuring a gallery of Nancy’s arrangements through all four seasons.
You’ll want to keep Windowsill Art close to your work area for inspiration.
Windowsill Art has inspired me to try some arrangements myself. I’ve noticed bits and pieces from nature in our yard I would have overlooked for use in an arrangement. We have a great deal of moss because of shade from our huge hemlock and beech trees, so I hope to use moss in my next arrangement.
I’m expanding my collection of vases and containers, too. At a local dairy, I bought large and small glass bottles of milk and cream; the empty bottles are terrific vases. I recently put aside a small jug that was filled with maple syrup, as well as an empty balsamic vinegar decanter.
If you happen to participate in Rambling in the Garden’s “In a Vase on Monday” meme, consider trying windowsill art for your next creation.
Books Can Save A Life 
Thanks, Val, for sharing this book. I will have to get it! If you were to see my windowsill above my sink you’d think I’ve already read the book. During the spring/summer my gardens are brimming over with herbs and flowers and I bring some inside to sit on the sill in a variety of small containers. It started as a way to not have to run outside in the heat to snip off some basil, oregano, or other herbs I wanted to use in cooking but I’ve discovered I find such joy in their company on the sill while doing dishes. Now that the weather is getting cooler I want to bring some of the herbs inside and see how long I can keep them going. I’ve been doing a series of woodcuts of Jersey fresh vegetables but I think I may also start a new series based on this idea…so many possibilities!
Thanks, Kathy, glad you stopped by the blog. I haven’t had tons of luck keeping herbs going inside, but some do ok. We just don’t get lots of sun through our windows most of the time.
I would love to see some of your table art. Do you ever photograph it for your blog? I especially love objects from nature, and I guess I never really thought about it, but cherished books do make a meaningful display, just for the memories and thoughts they evoke.
How beautiful and inspiring! I don’t have the kind of windowsills that can be used for display, but I do something similar that could be called “table-top” art. I have little tales where I display art objects and found art–rocks and shells bits of driftwood, that I combine with old books jars of flowers, etc. I think of them as “poetic” still life. Funny how such simple things can give so much pleasure.