Nebraska Cake Sketch (Framed)

Premise 

Each cake design is a journey into the imagination and in some ways, perhaps, a portrait of the mind of its maker.

Nebraska,

I just wanted to send over your wedding cake concept and sketch. I pulled elements that I loved from so many references that I was getting confused. A leaf from here and an orchid from there. I also used the Midsummer Night’s Dream script and including all mentions of flowers and fruits. I know you wanted the wedding to be like a pagan wedding feast. A summer solstice or other event and also loved the softness of the garden images. I think we have managed to achieve both the over abundant feel without anything being a touch medieval. It is fresh and interesting without being a Thanksgiving cornucopia, but still overflowing with abundance.

I was most struck at first with your inclusion of the Fantasia reference and puzzled myself for awhile with how to include, but I think the flowers themselves being strange and interesting in juxtaposition does that, using some of the Britt Asch 1990’s and generally more recent looking nostalgic flower images and merging it with lots of other references. The lady slipper orchids are used in both the Putnam cloche table image and in the black background inspiration image. I started with those in the sketch. They nod and give a sinister quality to me that says mystery. I have included two of the dark purple varieties and one of the light acid green.

I suppose the major element here is that I have used a garden urn as a cake stand instead of my usual ones. I never sway on this normally, but the thought a pagan wedding feast and a contemporary cake stand didn’t suit for me. I don’t know how we will source it, but I love the rough texture of the aged stone with moss. I love the idea that the cake itself is the “flower arrangement” and tried to keep all of the proportions like the urn one. From that, I also borrowed the yellow leaves. The gold yellow aged ferns and a hydrangea on the bottom left.  The arrangement at its core essentially goes up on the right with blades of grass similar to the Vogue poppy field image and then cascades downward with a visual weight and heaviness on the left. I have included poppies in the colors used in the field and from another scene in that layout. The darker orange poppies and peach apricot mixed with some pink.

The left-hand side includes swathes of pink honeysuckle. Instead of using a protea (which I considered because of the visual sharpness they have), I used three gloriosa lilies dancing amongst the honeysuckle swathes. Or woodbine was Shakespeare would call it. “Apricocks” “Dewberries” and “Grapes” are billowing over there too, as are two musk roses. All mentions of his.  

I’ve tucked tiny moments to find alongside the front of the tiers. Snakehead fritillaries. Some “nodding violets” and a pale-yellow Oxlip, which is a primula. A bright green fig is tucked there too. The previous three things are mentioned in the play. I added an eglantine rose up higher in the arrangement, as it was mentioned too. Some little viola pansies were borrowed from the Putnam table image and included as you go further right on the bottom image.

Other flowers included are a pink peony with the vibrant almost orange yellow stamens. In the upper left, a red anemone with bits of white showing at its center and its leaves. A white tulip with red veining hangs off the tier in the same area on the upper left, as does a textured piece of what could be a sprayed asparagus fern. I liked the texture. A orange crowned king fritillaria anchors the right hand side of the arrangement. Next to it is a yellow parrot tulip with red veining. An orange ranunculus is included in that general area too.  

A red rose. A peach Juliet rose, and a mulberry branch are also in the mix. The blades of grass on the right are echoed throughout the arrangement to tie it together. The field aspect seems important to include. It reminds me even of that image from the 1990’s Midsummer Night’s Dream of Calista Flockhart and crew barely clothed in the field of grass. The arrangement is topped with butterflies here and there. Borrowed from the Putnam long table image. Some are pale yellow. Some browns and blacks. Some with hints of orange. It is important I think to include the browns to bring it all back down to earth a bit and the black to let the background pop forward.  

The background of the cake is borrowed from the Vogue image. It is a periwinkle almost blue/ purple color. I see hints of purple in it. We could have gone with flat black as the background and fondant color, but I think it could take a softness away that is a little more romantic. The blades of grass and all the greenery were tinged with somewhat of the teal y blue green from the Vogue images and because you’ve used that elsewhere in your linens that made sense to me. I borrowed the linen green ish yellow color was the urn image and the little table too.