This book provides artists, needleworkers, and craftspeople with floral illustrations usable in a variety of ways. The full-page unified designs are complete patterns in themselves; the smaller motifs are individual spots that can be used directly or repeated and combined to create larger patterns; and there are also border elements. These designs and motifs encompass not only the strictly floral — a variety of representative Oriental flowers such as peony, wisteria, and lotus; cherry and plum trees in full bloom; and many kinds of herbaceous plants including bamboo — but also the associated animal life, such as grasshoppers climbing plant stalks, and birds, bees, and butterflies active amid the blossoms. All of these natural forms are rendered with the combination of elegance and precision characteristic of Far Eastern art.
