Step into The Botanical Shoes, a whimsical, watercolour collection of fantastical footwear, by best-selling artist and author Billy Showell.

Each shoe, composed of vibrant blooms and delicate leaves, and accompanied by thought-provoking poetry and prose, invites you on a journey of the imagination.

Discover a sumptuous and inspiring art book in which nature's beauty blossoms into stunning footwear. This captivating collection of watercolour artworks showcases over 50 floral footwear designs. Each delicate shoe, crafted from astonishingly detailed flowers, leaves and botanical elements tells a story of dreams, journeys and the magic of imagination - from the elegant 'Frida', the Rhododendron Rose Shoe, to the striking beauty of 'Luna', the Tulip Night Shoe. From floral high heels to botanical boots, each piece in this collection of over 50 singular shoes is a testament to the power of creativity and the boundless inspiration found in nature.

A work of art in itself, you'll want to keep this remarkable book close to hand: you'll find delicate new details and inspiring touches of Billy's imagination every time you open its pages.

About the Author

Billy Showell is an internationally renowned botanical painter, illustrator and tutor and is based in Kent in the UK. Her works are distinguishable by her striking compositions, and she has won several botanical awards as well as selling 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 in the Shirley Sherwood Collection as well as in private collections worldwide.

Visit her website: www.billyshowell.com and her Instagram: @billy_showell

Reviews

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.

-- Henry Malt * artbookreview.net *



Book Information
ISBN 9781800923539
Author Billy Showell
Format Hardback
Page Count 104
Imprint Search Press Ltd
Publisher Search Press Ltd