Magnolia

Sometimes the flower doesn't come first. You see something and just know.

That was what happened with these magnolia pieces.

I have always known I wanted to create something with magnolia. A study. There is nothing quite like seeing a magnolia tree just before it opens — branches full of almost-there buds, all reaching upwards into a blue spring sky like candles on a tree. And then, suddenly, they open. All at once. It's one of the most uplifting sights.

That was what I wanted to hold onto.

I set out recently with my daughter to find something quite different — pretty, delicate vases for the many flower ideas I seem to always have in my head. There were plenty to choose from, but none of them felt right.

And then I saw it.

A slightly imperfect stoneware vase — part bottle, part vase, slightly like a jug that had gone a bit wrong — and I loved it.

Ha, so much for delicate.

But it wasn't just that I thought a magnolia branch would look good in it. I saw it. The shape of the branch, how it would sit, how it would move. In my head it was already there, like it had always belonged.

There was no later realisation. It was right in that moment.

And that's where it began — not with the flower, but with the vase.

Around the same time, the magnolia stellata I'd been given for Mother's Day the year before was beginning to form buds again. Soft, almost fluffy, holding that sense of something just about to happen.

I kept noticing them. The shape. The spacing along the branch. That mix of structure and softness that magnolia seems to get exactly right.

It wasn't one clear idea. More a gathering of things that all pointed in the same direction.

I started with a smaller branch, just to work things out. Placement. How the petals sit. How far I could push it and still have it feel right.

But it didn't stay small for long.

It grew into something with more presence. More movement. A branch that felt closer to how it actually exists — a mix of buds and flowers, some just opening, some fully there, some already beginning to fade.

And then the frame.

That came from the idea of looking up into a magnolia tree and almost holding a frame to it — capturing a moment, but refining it. Grounding it.

The background is Farrow and Ball's Bancha, and it has to be one of my favourite colours. It shifts constantly. Dark and moody one minute, warm and almost bright the next, depending on the light.

I wanted the branch and flowers to have space. Enough room to cast shadows across the surface, adding another layer. The brushstrokes left visible, so it's clear this hasn't just appeared — it's been made. Time taken. Thought taken. The same kind of consideration that carries through other pieces, where how something sits matters just as much as what it is.

A light coat of wax brings the surface to life, adding yet another texture.

And then the flowers themselves — the full cycle held in one piece. Fuzzy buds. Tight buds. Flowers just opening. Fully open blooms. And those beginning to fall away.

All of it, held in one moment.

What started with a vase became something more than I expected.

 

And it was enough.

The magnolia pieces now sit within Available Works.

Rebecca