Natural silk flowers with vintage recycled pistils
Karuna Balloo is a textile horticulturist: she creates natural silk flowers and embellishes them with vintage pistils of the first half of the 20th Century, that she finds in the flea markets.
After ten years spent as a textile designer, Karuna Balloo, the daughter of a gardener and a seamstress, returned to her origins. Everything began by a discovery in a garage sales where she buys a stock of vintage pistils. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the women's hat industry is florishing and the manufacturing of fabric flowers allows entire families to live, until the hat falls into desuetude, after the war.
Karuna redeems everything she can find and which is useless: pistils, catkins, ornaments, vintage artificial stones. She purchases end-of-series silk from fashion houses, assembles and creates, taking inspiration from the nature. Karuna uses gilded brass, natural silk and cotton and does not use any synthetic material.
Photos © Karuna Balloo
Thursday 28 February 2019, 10:34
