‘Lily Castrator’
£240.00 – £280.00
Talking about the inspiration behind her exhibition pieces, Rosie says: ‘One day when I was a young child, I was sitting at the kitchen table watching my mother. She had a small pair of scissors and a fresh bouquet of lilies that she had just bought. ‘Snip’. I asked her what she was doing, and she said that she was removing the stamen because the pollen on them made her sneeze, and that it would stain everything.
Later that year, I remember learning about the parts of a flower in biology, and it made me think about the time my mother was cutting away the stamen from the lilies. I realised that she had been cutting off the male parts of the flowers. As the formidable woman that she has always been, it seemed quite amusing and fitting that this act of ‘lily castrating’ is what she had been doing.
I began to wonder about the act of buying and displaying flowers, a pastime that seems to be performed predominantly by women. The amusing image of a Women’s Institute group meeting to buy lilies and snip off the stamen together came into my mind. An act done for very practical reasons, but that could be interpreted as a misandric ritual. I designed the Lily Castrator as a tool for the easy removal of stubborn stamen wherever a woman finds herself.’
Materials: each Lily Castrator is made using traditional metalwork techniques. Sharp enough to remove that stubborn stamen from your life, but harmless enough so that you can wear it around your neck without worry of the potential of accidentally snipping something else.