Frozen beauty: a craftswoman from Barnaul creates Red Book flowers from polymer clay

Arrangements of rare flowers decorate the exhibition halls of the Altai National Park “Salair” all year round. At the same time, none of the Red Book plants was damaged: the herbarium is completely made of polymer clay.

The idea to create unique types of flowers to the master of ceramic floristry Inna Zueva suggested by a former classmate.

“She worked in the reserve. When I showed that I create flowers, she told me: “Listen, it would be great if we had some kind of unusual herbarium, where there would be copies of plants, just the same, similar to living ones.” And we came up with a project and called it “Alternative Herbarium,” the craftswoman said.

National park worker and biologist Evald Lushchaev talked about the process of preparing to create unique flowers.

“The material that we request from Inna Zueva is an exclusive material, no one else in the country does this. You need to take a plant – it can be rare, from the Red Book, first learn all its botanical signs, all its characteristics, look at a bunch of material in all sorts of determinants, look at sites on all sorts of pictures that exist with this plant, maybe find it live in nature and examine every hair, every hair on this plant – and only after that make a realistic object that will fully correspond to what is in nature, ”the man explained.

The craftswoman added that even children can sculpt flowers from polymer clay, but creating realistic models requires perseverance and attention to detail.

The works of Inna Zueva were also appreciated by experts in the field of botany. Rare flowers are not immediately distinguishable from real ones.

“We are proud to have met such a master, because everyone who sees this plant simply exclaims: “Is this even possible?” Lushchaev said.