FROM THE PAST: Egyptian Period: (2800-28 BC)
from the AIFD Guide to Floral Design

Floral design styles were taken from surviving art, which was simplistic, repetitious, and highly stylized. Flowers and fruits were placed in carefully alternating patterns. Chaplets, wreaths, garlands, and flower collars were portrayed along with bowls of flowers carried or held aloft. Interpretive Design Applications: Egyptian Design is typified by geometric shapes, particularly the SYMMETRICAL TRIANGLE and fan, created with materials representing the region. Designs usually lack depth and make use of the colors of the period-particularly those of sky, water, sand, sun, and vegetation.

Luxor, Egypt -- The first tomb discovered in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings in 80 years doesn’t have any mummies, but archaeologists opened the last of eight sarcophagi Wednesday to reveal something even more valuable: embalming materials and ancient woven flowers.
Hushed researchers craned their necks and members of the news media scuffled inside the stiflingly hot underground stone chamber as Egyptian antiquities chief Zahi Hawass slowly cracked open the coffin’s lid -- for what scientists believe is the first time in more than 3,000 years.
But instead of a mummy, as archaeologists had expected, the coffin revealed a tangle of fabric and rusty-colored dehydrated flowers woven together in laurels that looked likely to crumble to dust if touched. “I prayed to find a mummy, but when I saw this, I said it’s better -- it’s really beautiful,” said Nadia Lokma, chief curator of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The flowers were likely the remains of garlands, often entwined with gold strips, that ancient Egyptian royals wore around their shoulders in both life and death, she said. “It’s very rare -- there’s nothing like it in any museum. We’ve seen things like it in drawings, but we’ve never seen this before in real life -- it’s magnificent,” Lokma said.
- Alfred de Montesquiou, Associated Press - June 29, 2006