All-women team Broccoli – a brand that explores the artistic and cultural side of cannabis – is on a mission to rebrand this much-maligned plant through creativity. Their newly released book A Weed is a Flower is sometimes hokey, sometimes humorous, but always serious about cultivating “reverence for a misunderstood plant”, according to Broccoli’s creative director and editor-in-chief Anja Charbonneau.
According to Charbonneau, placing flowers alongside cannabis – a plant that can often make people uncomfortable – can make the spiky weed a lot more palatable. Not a traditional object of beauty, cannabis is nevertheless given its due in this 168-page hardcover book, which explores everything from marijuana ikebana to weed balloon flower arrangements. A slightly surreal homage to this versatile plant, the book is a real collector’s item, containing a number of prints that can be framed and hung on the wall.
Divided into two sections – Wild Flowers and Super Blooms – the book provides a visual representation of the “wiggly feelings” of being high, according to participating photographer Ali Blumenthal. But A Weed is a Flower also tries to define precisely what the 25 photographers and floral artists from around the world find so compelling about the cannabis plant.
The title of the book has been taken from a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox: “A weed is but an unloved flower.” Cannabis is anything but unloved, however, and the book celebrates its many forms and uses. From Lane Walkup’s quirky wire sculptures of cannabis flowers in vases and Brett Design’s elegant weed wallpaper to Yasmin Bawn’s furniture and sculptures made of hempcrete – tough hemp fibres intermixed with lime and clay – the potential of this humble plant seems endless.
A lot of the products featured in the book ship internationally, and cannabis-inspired décor may be the next big thing as the weed aesthetic appeals to users and non-users alike. Broccoli X Katherine Plumb’s reversible weed flower blanket and Paula Codoñer’s frameable ‘Psychedelic Fleurs’ postcard set would be the highlight of any living room.
Credits: Broccoli
Read more:
The CannaCloud is the instant high without the fuss.
Building a more sustainable future.
