Each year when it comes to wishing our colleagues and friends a Merry Christmas we like to get creative. We have this idea that we’ll come up with an idea ‘far out’ and we’ll be ready come 1st December.We had a couple of ideas, one of which we experimented, but it didn’t really work. It involved hyacinths, maybe next year (this years even!)
Feeling a little stumped and scratching our heads we went for a walk on the estate to assess the damage of Storm Darragh. It was one of those rare winter anti-cyclonic days with a blue-sky. We were just finishing up when from the corner of my eye I spotted a huge bough of mistletoe. Penshurst is well stocked with mistletoe and it’s found really high up in the trees. An idea was forming and we collected it as forage and took it back to the studio.
Then we had to work out how to photograph it as it’s a completely crazy mass of greenery with small white berries. Mistletoe is traditionally hung, but it was really quite heavy, 5 kilos approximately. Out came the stands, black backdrop and the fishing wire to hang this mad piece of foliage. The problem was that once we’d hung this huge bough, it wouldn’t remain still because it was not the exact weight all the way around. Eventually we decided to anchor it further using the wire. This worked and we just needed the finishing touch of the satin red bow. Then from camera to computer and some adjustments, we’d salvaged our tradition!
