Flora: Celebrating Our Botanical World
The magnificent plant world of Aotearoa New Zealand in art and object.
Edited by Carlos Lehnebach, Claire Regnault, Rebecca Rice, Isaac Te Awa, and Rachel Yates
Publication date: November 2023
NZ RRP (incl. GST): $80
Extent: 452 pages
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 978-1-99-115091-2
Buy Flora: Celebrating Our Botanical World
This big, glorious book mines Te Papa’s collections to explore and expand upon the way we think about our botanical world and its cultural imprint. A true treasure, it features over 400 selections by an expert, cross-disciplinary museum curatorial team that range from botanical specimens and art to photography, furniture, jewellery, tīvaevae, applied art, textiles, stamps and more.
Flora’s twelve essays provide a deeper contextual understanding of different topics, including the unique characteristics of New Zealand flora as well as how artists and cultures have used flora as a motif and a subject over time. Elegant, expert and engrossing.
Look inside Flora: Celebrating Our Botanical World
Awards
Winner of the NZ Booklovers Award for Best Lifestyle Book 2024, sponsored by Benefitz
Longlisted for the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand Award for Illustrated Non-fiction
Review Highlights
Aotearoa New Zealand Review of Books, reviewed by Joyce Campbell. “Every one of the 402 images in this book is a love letter and a testament to human life entangled with the lives of plants. Te Papa’s large curatorial team, who spend their days steeped in this glorious collection, have dug deep to find those stories, and to share them with us. Open Flora on any page and you will be drawn into and immersed in those stories. What pleasure, what joy, what richness, what abundance, what love.”
The Spinoff, Claire Mabey: “Flora is a triumph: it’s so hard to resist the allure of botanical drawing (somehow kind of fantastical, but it’s science, but it’s art).
NZ Listener. (Premium content) “Several years in the making, this is a declared visual celebration of the relationships between people and plants.”
Kete, reviewed by Linda Herrick. “Huge, sumptuous and gorgeous.”
Waikato Times, “. . . dives deep into the museum's collections to celebrate the secrets of the plant world in Aotearoa and beyond.”
Art New Zealand, “. . . bigger, better and longer-lasting than a sumptuous turkey dinner; it will amply satisfy appetites for the rest of this and future years.”
North & South, “The perfect Christmas gift.”
Author interviews
Plains FM Bookenz, Rebecca Rice and Carlos Lehnebach interviewed by Morrin Rout.
RNZ Culture 101, Rebecca Rice interviewed by Mark Amery.
About the editors
Carlos Lehnebach is Curator Botany at Te Papa. His expertise lies in the native orchids of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Claire Regnault is Senior Curator New Zealand Histories and Cultures at Te Papa. She is the author of several books. Her most recent, Dressed, won the Illustrated Non-Fiction Award at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Rebecca Rice is Curator of New Zealand Historical Art at Te Papa and has a special interest in early botanical art. She is working on a book on the taonga associated with the New Zealand Wars held at Te Papa.
Isaac Te Awa is Curator Mātauranga Māori at Te Papa. He is a practising weaver and is actively collecting for Te Papa’s contemporary taonga Māori collection.
Rachel Yates is a former Curator Pacific Cultures at Te Papa, where she worked closely with Pacific maker communities. She now works for the Ministry for Culture and Heritage.
Publication date: November 2023
NZ RRP (incl. GST): $80
Extent: 452 pages
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 978-1-99-115091-2
