Nature Had its Time is a toast to Joris-Karl Huysmans’ novel À rebours (1884) via a weekend-long presentation of plants & the launch of a new book. The show took place in Brussels, in the space that used to host the Taschen store.

 

The plants presented were the ultra-precious (at the time at least) hybrid and exotic house-plants, carefully selected by the protagonist of À rebours, aristocrat Jean Les Floressas des Esseintes, for his villa in the village Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris.

The scenography - which lined up the plants along the walls in the order of which they’re mentioned on the page - was dreamed up together with Gustave Van Damme. 

 

The book Nature had its time – wild fruit of a “free idea” and “passion project” – adds to a core album of the specimens shot by Guillaume Blondiau, drawings by Lukas De Ryck, writings by Nikolaas Verstraeten, botanical savvy by Nicolas Vandenplas and special interventions by Kamiel de Waal, Oumar Dicko and Renée Paule. The mise en page is at the hand of Emile de Geyndt.

 

The book contains 88 pages of 28 x 40,5 cm in an edition of 300, and is available clandestinely, as well as in Brussels: in the Wiels Bookshop & Les Enfants d’Edouards.