A leaf drawn as veins alone. A central stem runs the length of the piece with side veins branching from it, each a fine line of pavé diamond tapering to a polished point, and the spaces between them left open to the air. The colour travels along the structure, and the light passes straight through.
Blue is the colour nature gives most sparingly. Among the twenty-five thousand or so species of orchid, scarcely any of them are truly blue, and the blue orchids offered in shops are almost always white flowers that have been dyed. The one that carries it naturally is Vanda coerulea, the blue Vanda, which grows wild through northern Thailand and the…