Floral sensation: Constance Spry
The enduring impact of Constance Spry
You may never have heard of Constance Spry but you will almost certainly have heard of, and probably eaten, one thing she had a hand in inventing: Poulet Reine Elizabeth, now generally known as Coronation Chicken.
Taken with the publication of her eponymous Cook Book in 1956, she is often associated with food rather than flowers but this dynamic, creative, hard-working woman thought of herself first and foremost as a gardener. She changed the face of floristry with her radical floral arrangements in the inter-war period but their ephemeral nature and the relatively small number of surviving colour images of her designs in context have contributed to under-recognition of her artistry and innovativeness.
Misogyny might also have played a part. In 2004, when the director of the Design Museum, Alice Rawsthorn, decided to stage a show celebrating her work, the boys threw their toys. James Dyson resigned as Chair, furious that 'shallow styling' was being valued over 'serious, technical things', while Terence Conran, the museum's founder, raged at celebrating 'high-society mimsiness'.
Since then a revealing biography by Sue Shephard and an exhibition at the Garden Museum have highlighted just how poorly-judged Conran’s insult was. Constance came from modest beginnings and spent the first half of her life working in poor communities. She wanted flowers and gardens to be accessible to all, for the joy and peace they offered. And prim? Underwhelming? Ineffectual? Judge for yourself.
Her first career
Constance’s breakthrough moment in floral design came relatively late. She had spent most of the first two decades of her working life in education. She was born in Derby, where her father, George, was appointed headmaster of Derby Technical College in 1891. In 1901, the family moved to Ireland. Constance finished her own schooling at the well-regarded Alexandra College and then began her training in health and welfare education. Her first job was as a lecturer on health and first aid for London County Council. In 1907 she returned to Ireland for a full-time lecturing job at the Women's National Health Association, where giving practical demonstrations were an important part of her job.
She was still in Dublin during the Easter Rising of 1916 and won a St John silver medal for her organisation of the Red Cross's response. She later said she had lived through three wars. Soon afterwards, she returned to England as a welfare supervisor at the Vickers armaments factories in Barrow-in-Furness. Within nine months she had been moved to a role at the Ministry of Munitions in London and when the war ended she took a job at the Inland Revenue.
In 1921, she saw an opportunity to return to the world of education, applying for the role of head of the new Homerton and South Hackney Day Continuation School in east London. Set up by London County Council, these schools were designed to provide vocational courses for 14-16 year olds. As well as running the school, she gave lessons in flower arranging. And so things might have continued. But a visit from a friend, Marjorie Russell, kicked off a chain of events that would change the course of Constance's life.
Making 5 to 9 her 9 to 5
Constance had loved flowers since her teens. When she was still at school her hobby was providing floral arrangements for friends' mothers' dinner parties and as an adult she maintained a garden wherever she was living.
Her influences included CW Earle’s ‘Pot Pourri from a Surrey Garden’ (1898) with its chapter on flower arrangement and, of course, Gertrude Jekyll. She owned a copy of Jekyll’s 1907 book, ‘Flower Decoration in the House’, and subscribed to some of Jekyll’s core philosophies: consider the room first, particularly with regard to colour; use flowers from the garden as well as twigs from the wood and branches from the hedgerow; good room decoration can be done with foliage only.
She also took inspiration from 17th century Dutch still life paintings as she set about creating innovative decorations, sometimes on pedestals, sometimes in pie dishes.
Constance’s friends from her days at the Ministry, including Marjorie, knew of her skills and she soon had a side hustle providing arrangements for parties and dinners.
Marjorie was joined on her visit by Sidney Bernstein, owner of the Granada cinema chain. He loved Constance’s floral displays and invited her to a lunch in London. One of the other guests was Norman Wilkinson, a theatrical designer, who had a new commission for Atkinson’s, a perfumery firm.
The company was moving into a stunning new building on the corner of Old Bond Street and Burlington Street. and Wilkinson was in charge of the shop’s design. Its site meant it had four large windows, in which Wilkinson envisioned spectacular floral displays. (Now they are full of Ferragamo.) Bernstein said that if she agreed, he would give her a contract to supply plants for his cinema foyers.
After thinking long and hard, Constance agreed. In the summer of 1928, at the age of 42, she opened 'Flower Decorations' and embraced her new career.
Stopping the traffic
Wilkinson’s confidence was more than repaid and when Constance’s creations were revealed, they brought traffic to a standstill. People were used to static combinations of carnations and gypsophilia; instead they saw branches covered in lichen, coloured cabbage leaves, onions, overblown peonies arranged in assymetric, large-scale, dramatic displays. It was a pivotal moment in floral decoration. ‘Before Mrs Spry, flower arranging was a domestic chore. With Mrs Spry it became an international art.’1
Through Wilkinson, Constance was drawn into a new circle of artists and designers: Cecil Beaton, Victor Siebel (who later designed her shop uniforms), Norman Hartnell (pictured here with what looks like a Constance Spry arrangement in the background), Oliver Messel, Rex Whistler, Oliver Hill and, probably most important of all, Syrie Maugham, with whom she collaborated on a number of influential projects.
Society weddings offered more opportunities to build her brand. Her commission to do the flowers for the marriage of Mary Lutyens in 1930 at St Margaret’s, Westminster, finally got Constance onto the 'approved supplier' list for the key London churches. However, three years later she was in hot water. To realise Cecil Beaton’s creative vision for the wedding of his sister Nancy to Sir Hugh Smiley, she white-washed the garlands of flowers that linked the bridesmaids. The effect was stunning but left paint flakes scattered across the stone floor of St. Margaret’s. She was banned for a year.
It did nothing to stop her rise. In 1934, she got her first royal commission and in 1935 she created the arrangements for the wedding of the Duke of Gloucester to Alice Montagu Douglas Scott. Two years later, she was one of only twenty or so witnesses to one of the most-discussed weddings of the century when the Duke of Windsor married Wallis Simpson in France.
Living and loving
Constance’s professional life bloomed in the 1930s but her private life was tumultuous. In November 1910 she had married a widower, James Heppell Marr and become step-mother to his six-year-old daughter, Joan. They had a child together, Anthony, in 1912. However, the relationship soon became abusive and foundered. When war broke out, James left for the front and the marriage became one in name only.
Constance’s move to London from Barrow-in-Furness in 1917 brought new love. Her boss at the Ministry was Henry 'Shav' Spry. He was also married, with two children. They began an affair. After the war, Constance secured a divorce, but for some reason Shav did not, so Constance simply changed her name to Spry and they presented themselves to society as a married couple. There is no evidence that they ever made this official.
Constance was a generous host, frequently inviting her colleagues out to her home in Surrey. A woman she hired in 1929, Val Pirie, quickly became her right hand and was a frequent visitor. In early 1932, Val and Shav started a relationship.
Constance, now an unwilling member of a ménage à trois which affected both her personal and professional life, soon found solace elsewhere. Up in Hampstead, Edward Maufe had just built a new studio for the gender non-conforming artist Gluck (1895-1978).
Gluck had a keen interest in flowers so Prudence Maufe, who had already started putting Constance's floral arrangements alongside Gluck's paintings in the show flat she ran in Heal's, arranged for a 'Mixed Bunch' of white flowers from Flower Decorations as a studio-warming gift. 'I think she has a genius for flowers and you have a genius for paint, so that ought to make for happiness,' she told Gluck.
Val Pirie did the original arrangement and Gluck decided to paint it. The flowers had to be refreshed week after week and eventually Constance decided to make the delivery herself. Prudence's prediction was more accurate than she had perhaps realised and Constance and Gluck were soon in an intense relationship, which lasted until 1936.
The painting that resulted from this first encounter, Chromatic, formed the centrepiece of Gluck's show at the Fine Arts Society later that year and Constance featured it in her first book two years later as exemplifying 'the delicacy and the strength, the subtleties and the grandeur of white flowers.'
Formal floral arrangements became a strong theme of Gluck's work during this period, immortalising Constance's creations. Constance introduced her to new buyers and their work became the centrepiece of rooms designed by Oliver Hill and Syrie Maugham. The couple holidayed in Tunisia and spent weekends at Constance's house. Sometimes Shav was there. Whether or not Val was also there is unclear. Constance was dumped by Gluck in 1936 but Val and Shav's relationship continued and they eventually married in 1962, two years after Constance's death.
A landmark publication
In August 1934, Constance published her first book, 'Flower Decoration', to glowing reviews. It was true that much her work was done for high society, wealthy clients: they were the ones with the budgets. But Constance was no snob. She wanted her book to be relevant to everyone, whether they were working with flowers from a purpose-designed cutting garden or buttercups from the side of the road.
With barely anything written on flower arranging for the last thirty years, Constance's practical and instructive book was a breath of fresh air, with no knowledge assumed but still much to offer to the more experienced reader. 'Mrs Spry's book is for everyone.. delightful and fascinating' reported the Sunday Mirror. 'Rhubarb and spurge, the green flowers of the garden onion, the seed heads of poppies and seakale, lichen-covered branches, wild arum, deadly nightshade, gourds, marrows and sprays of tomatoes - to the seeing eye all these things have decorative value' reported the Yorkshire Post. The verdict was unanimous: 'Mrs Spry is an artist. Her flower arrangements have all the perfection of little masterpieces', concluded the Tatler.
Her reputation grew and grew through the 1930s and Shav brought some much-needed financial discipline to keep it profitable. She set up the Constance Spry Flower School in 1934 alongside a new, larger, location for Floral Decorations in Mayfair and was employing seventy people. It was during the war that she first wrote about food. ‘Come Into the Garden, Cook’, published in 1942, encouraged readers to make meals from vegetables grown at home.
When the war ended, Constance was heading towards 60 and had more energy than ever. She opened Le Cordon Bleu school in partnership with the chef Rosemary Hume and in 1947 supervised the flowers for the marriage of Princess Elizabeth to Philip Mountbatten in Westminster Abbey.
In 1950 she published the best-selling ‘How to Do the Flowers’ and global fame came through her role in the Coronation (which earned her an OBE) and the landmark publication of the Constance Spry Cookery Book, in collaboration with Rosemary. She was showing no signs of stopping when in January 1960, she suddenly died after a fall at her home in Berkshire.
Constance’s legacy may be most visible in supermarket chiller units across the land but it is in floristry that it really lies. In the UK it is now a billion-pound industry, employing over 20,000 people. 90% of them women, thousands of whom, like her, are running their own businesses.
Constance published eleven books in total and was a lyrical writer. I will give her the last words: ‘Do what you please, follow your own star; be original if you want to be and don't if you don't want to be. Just be natural and gay and light-hearted and pretty and simple and overflowing and general and baroque and austere and stylized and wild and daring and conservative and learn and learn.’
Mimsy? I don’t think so.
Going out / staying in
As a Shropshire lass (sort of), I am going to give a plug for the David Austin Rose Garden, where in a few weeks’ time, you will be able to see the Constance Spry rose in full bloom.
Closer to hand, the Garden Museum has an online version of its excellent 2021 exhibition, ‘Constance Spry and the Fashion for Flowers. Explore and enjoy!
Next time it’s back to the Women’s Jubilee Dinner of 1897, to explore some of the women’s networks of the late 19th century. If you missed Parts One and Two, you have time to catch up. See you then!
Anna Scott-James in the Daily Express 5/1/1960
Love this newsletter, so many wonderful women I have never heard of till they appear here!
She is an incredible woman and one who has escaped a narrow definition and the inference that all she did was shallow. I was delighted when I found out her Hackney connection, and hearing Shane Connolly (the Royal florist) talk about her started a bit of research to find out where the Homerton School was. She also has the best ‘last words’. “Someone else can arrange this”.