pressed flower preservation
Your meaningful flowers are carefully preserved and composed into botanical artwork. From wedding bouquets to memorial flowers, pressed preservation gives your actual blooms a lasting place in your home.
Each piece is designed with you, bringing together your flowers, your memories and the way you want to display them.
2ND GENERATION | AWARD-WINNING | NATIONALLY & INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNISED | AUSTRALIA-WIDE
EST. 1992 | NATIONALLY & INTERNATIONALLY RECOGONISED | AUSTRALIA-WIDE
Your flowers, reimagined as botanical art
Pressing transforms your flowers into a flatter form, changing their texture and the overall feel of the arrangement.
Roses may be opened to reveal their petals or preserved in profile. Highly textural flowers, such as dahlias and disbud chrysanthemums, take on a different appearance when pressed. This can be particularly noticeable in a single-colour bouquet, where much of its character comes from the shapes and textures of the flowers.
WHAT DOES PRESSED PRESERVATION CHANGE?
Your flowers, your Design
Although pressed artwork has a predominantly two-dimensional form, our reconstruction introduces gentle depth and movement into the petals, preserving a more natural floral appearance.
How We Preserve Your Flowers Through Pressing
2. PREPARING EACH Bloom
1. ASSESSMENT & COLOUR RECORDING
3. CONTROLLED MOISTURE REMOVAL
5. COLOUR ENHANCEMENT, fumigation & RECONSTRUCTION
4. YOUR DESIGN CONSULTATION
No two flowers respond to preservation in exactly the same way. Before pressing begins, we assess the condition, structure, hydration and colour of each bloom individually.
When your flowers arrive, we assess their condition and hydration and rehydrate them where required. We photograph the arrangement, assess the individual blooms and record their colours against the Royal Horticultural Society Colour Chart.
These records give us a reference as the flowers move through preservation, reconstruction and colour enhancement.
We carefully dismantle your arrangement and prepare the flowers for pressing. Many blooms are separated petal by petal or into smaller sections, allowing us to preserve their individual components before reconstructing them.
Thicker flowers, succulents and berries require different preparation and may be sliced or segmented to achieve a flatter form.
Your prepared flowers are placed between pressing boards, with up to 120 kilograms of weight applied to gently compress the boards together, flattening the flowers within. The boards are then secured in place, and moisture is slowly and steadily extracted from the flowers as water vapour under a high vacuum.
We monitor the moisture collected in the chamber to determine when this stage is complete. Initial preservation, including moisture removal and petal stabilisation, takes approximately six to eight weeks.
Once your flowers are stabilised, usually at around six to eight weeks, we invite you to your design consultation.
Together, we work through the composition, frame, background, glazing and any mementos you would like included. You’ll also be able to see examples of your preserved flowers, so your design decisions are based on how they have actually responded to preservation.
We then prepare a sketch of the proposed design so you can understand how the elements will come together.
Every flower receives colour enhancement to support long-term colour retention, guided by the colour recorded when it arrived.
We then carefully reconstruct the flowers, lifting and shaping petals to introduce subtle depth. This helps them retain a natural appearance rather than looking completely flat or paper-like.
Following your consultation, colour enhancement, fumigation, reconstruction and completion of your display generally take a further ten weeks. Most finished artworks are ready within four to six months of receiving your flowers.
designed around your story
Your consultation shapes both the composition and the finished frame.
You might choose an arrangement that recalls your bouquet, a more open botanical composition, or flowers arranged around a photograph or treasured note. Bring your ideas and inspiration, and we will discuss how they can work with your preserved flowers.
We also explore frame options and backgrounds, including a double-glass display or an acid-free, lignin-free mat board background.
Thicker mementos can sometimes be incorporated too. We have combined pressed bridal bouquets with three-dimensional buttonholes and bow ties. These combinations introduce contrasting depths, which we discuss with you when planning the overall design.
materials and protection
Your artwork is finished in a timber frame, with acid-free, lignin-free mat board used where the design calls for it.
Our glazing provides at least 99% UV protection. Museum glass is available as an upgrade for reduced reflections and greater viewing clarity.
Preserved flowers remain natural materials. Some variation in colour and form is part of preservation, and white flowers may take on a slightly creamier tone. Gentle antiquing can also occur over time, even with colour enhancement and protective glazing.
Every pressed artwork is covered by our lifetime framing workmanship guarantee and two-year insect warranty.
A. Pressing changes the shape and texture of your flowers, so the finished artwork will have a different feel from your fresh bouquet. We can create a composition that echoes its original arrangement, while allowing for how each flower looks once pressed.
Flowers with pronounced texture, such as dahlias and disbuds, can look particularly different in a flatter form.
A. Yes. We can incorporate your entire bouquet into a pressed artwork. During your consultation, we discuss the frame size and composition needed to accommodate your flowers.
A. Different flowers require different preparation. Flowers with more lignin, the substance that gives woody tissue its rigidity, are harder to flatten than softer blooms.
We also work with thick flowers, succulents and berries, using slicing or segmentation where needed. We assess your flowers individually and explain how their structure may affect the result.
A. Yes. White flowers can be pressed and preserved, although they may develop a slightly creamier tone. We discuss natural colour variations as part of the preservation process.
A. Yes. Every flower receives colour enhancement, using our intake colour records as a reference. This is part of our process to support colour retention over the years ahead.
A. We cannot press an already dried bouquet. Once dried, flowers become brittle and can crumble when flattened.
If your flowers have already been pressed elsewhere, we can assess them for restoration and framing. Because the original preservation was completed by another provider, we cannot offer the same preservation assurances as we do for flowers processed entirely in our studio.
A. Yes. Photographs, invitations, handwritten notes and other meaningful items can be included in your design. Some thicker items can also be accommodated, with their depth considered as part of the overall composition.
A. Your design consultation takes place once the initial preservation is complete, approximately six to eight weeks after your flowers arrive. This is when we discuss your frame, background, layout and mementos.
A. Most artworks take four to six months from receiving your flowers to completion. Initial preservation takes approximately six to eight weeks, followed by your design consultation and the remaining enhancement, fumigation, reconstruction and framing stages.
