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29 October, 6:00 PM

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Each one the only one

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Sandy Whitaker

A Cartersville, Georgia studio where self-taught artist Sandy Whitaker has pressed flowers and ferns from her own garden since 2011. Southern Crafted carries her original pressings.

Edition0 pieces, no two alike

MadePressed flowers and ferns, many grown in her own garden

ShippingPacked by hand and shipped insured

Botanicals by Sandy

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Where it started

Eight hundred dollars for a pressed flower

Sandy Whitaker is a self-taught artist in Cartersville, Georgia who has pressed flowers and ferns since 2011. She had raised four children, and when they left home she went looking for something of her own. On a trip to Chattanooga for her husband’s fiftieth birthday she found pressed botanicals in a shop priced at eight hundred dollars apiece, wanted ten of them, and decided to make her own instead.

The garden

She grows most of what she presses

Most of what goes into a piece comes out of her own backyard — hydrangea, fern, dogwood — grown, cut and pressed by hand, then arranged one stem at a time. “I paint with nature,” is how she puts it. The blue hydrangeas are what people come back for; they are the ones that remind her of her grandmother’s house.

What we have

These are the originals

Sandy’s own shop sells giclée reproductions — high-resolution scans of her pressings, framed by partners in Atlanta. They are lovely, and they are not the same thing. What arrives here is nine original pressings mounted on black: the actual hydrangea, the actual dogwood, a white orchid. Each is the only one of its kind, which is the whole reason to want one.

Practical

Before it ships

How will it arrive?

Packed by hand between rigid board and shipped insured. If it arrives damaged, send us a photograph and we’ll make it right.

Is this an original or a print?

An original. Sandy presses the plants herself, and each of these is the actual pressing — not a scan of one. Her own shop sells giclée reproductions; these are the pieces those reproductions are made from.

Will the colors fade?

Pressed botanicals are organic material and they will shift over years, the way a watercolor does. Keep the piece out of direct sun and it will hold its color for a long time.

What if it sells before I decide?

Then it’s gone. Each pressing is the only one — the plants that made it were cut once, in one season, and there is no reordering.

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Next on the list

17 OctoberCorey AlstonCoiled sweetgrass and bulrush baskets from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, by the Gullah Geechee maker whose work is in the Smithsonian.

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Two releases a month through the holidays, then one a month. No code, nothing marked down; that isn’t what it’s for.

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