The Botanical Shoes

When this landed on the mat, I thought it was the most bizarre idea I had ever seen. The more so when I discovered that, although I had managed to miss it when it first appeared in 2022, this is a reprint. Is there really a market for this, especially from an ostensibly practical art publisher? And yet here it is, reprinted and still in a not-exactly-cheap hardback format.

The title page says that it’s “Dedicated to my students and long-time followers of my Flower Shoes”. So it’s a thing and you certainly can’t say it’s not original. This being Billy Showell, the execution is beyond excellent and I can actually see the appeal, at least up to a point. Billy clearly has a market, although I’m not sure quite how many flowers-as-shoes any one person would want. I’m wary of damning with faint praise or being cynical, though, as the dedication suggests a following, so what does a humble reviewer know?

Fortunately, we’re not here to evaluate the art or speculate on whose walls such things might take pride of place.* This is a book review, so the first thing to say is that it’s the kind of excellent production we know Search Press to be capable of. The reproduction gives us plenty of detail, the format is generous and the pages fall open willingly. Although Billy includes her students in the dedication, this is not an instructional book and the text only makes very passing reference to her working methods, being confined to design and colour choices. That’s appropriate, because the idea is so original and so idiosyncratic that I can’t imaging anyone wanting to emulate it other than as perhaps a one-off experiment.

This is a magnificent book that clearly has a market, and that is probably driven by Billy’s prodigious creative skill.

Throughout the book, Billy’s words encourage the artist to play - with colour, with composition and even with poetry and prose. She drops in little tips here and there for keeping the yellows true, warming-up the reds and tackling those difficult chocolatey purples.First published in 2022, this is an updated second edition offering those who missed it the first time around an opportunity to discover the book. I noticed in the publisher’s notes that readers are permitted to reproduce any of the artworks in this book for personal use, or for the purpose of selling for charity, free of charge and without prior permission which generously offers those who are developing their botanical painting skills an opportunity to practise by recreating Billy’s designs.

The quality of this new 22 cm x 29 cm, 104 page hardback edition is such that it would enliven any coffee table and is novel enough to entice those who are unfamiliar with the science and strictures of pure botanical illustration to peek inside and find joy in the poetic prose and exquisite artwork it contains.

Billy Showell is an internationally renowned botanical painter, illustrator, and tutor based in Kent in the UK. Her works are distinguishable by her striking compositions, and she has won several botanical awards and sold over 50,000 copies of her books to date. Billy’s work is held in the collections of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Hunt Institute (USA), and the Shirley Sherwood Collection, as well as in private collections worldwide.