3 days ago | Advertorial | Philippa Morrow

“My eyes are going. These are the last ones I’ll ever engrave.” Why a 76-year-old engraver from Oamaru is offering her own little invention to all of New Zealand for the first – and last – time

For 18 springs, Jocelyn Harrop’s hand-engraved pocket flower presses were sold at one stall, at the Victorian Fête in Oamaru. She invented them for her granddaughter, who kept coming home in tears with crushed flowers. Now her eyes are failing, and her last 63 presses are going online for the first and only time.

Jocelyn Harrop (76) at her bench in Oamaru this November, with one of the last presses she will ever make.

Oamaru, November. The rhododendrons in the Public Gardens are in full flower, and the little workshop behind the Harrop house on the hill smells of metal polish, beeswax and tea gone cold. On the bench under the window lies a row of small gold-plated plates, none bigger than a matchbox. Jocelyn Harrop pulls the magnifier lamp down, picks up her graver and leans in, the way she has done almost every morning since 1968.

“I’m 76,” she says, and puts the graver down again. “The lines on a petal are thinner than a hair. A year ago I could still see them. Now I find half of them by feel, and that isn’t good enough.” In June, the optometrist put a name to what she already felt: macular degeneration. “Slow, but it only goes one way,” she says. The house sold in October, and the workshop goes with it. At the end of January, she and her husband Graeme are moving into a unit in Dunedin, close to their daughter. “There’s no room for an engraving bench in a unit,” she says. “So this is it.”

It started with a little girl who came home crying

Jocelyn has engraved for 58 years. She started at 18 in her father’s shop on Thames Street – trophies, honours boards, the inside of wedding rings – and took it over when he retired. The flower presses came much later, because of one little girl.

In 2008, her granddaughter Saskia was five, and every Sunday the two of them walked the long way round through the Public Gardens to Jocelyn’s place. Saskia picked everything: violets out of the lawn, dandelion clocks, a sprig of kōwhai off the footpath. She carried it all home in her fist or stuffed it into her cardigan pocket.

“And every Sunday it was the same,” Jocelyn says. “We’d get to the gate, she’d open her hand, and it was mush. Squashed, wilted, petals everywhere. And then the tears.”

How most picked flowers end up: squashed in a warm little hand on the way home, or brown in a book three weeks later.

Why the old ways don’t work

Jocelyn tried what everybody tries. She laid Saskia’s flowers in the phone book and stacked the dictionary on top. “By the time you get a flower to the book, it’s already half gone,” she says. “And then the book does the rest of the damage.”

A phone book is printed paper. It doesn’t draw the water out of a petal, so the flower sits damp between the pages for weeks. Purple turns brown, yellow turns the colour of weak tea, thicker flowers go mouldy, and the pages stay stained for good.

Other people try the quick way, with the microwave or the iron. “That cooks it,” Jocelyn says. “Sure, it’s flat. But the colour’s gone and it crumbles when you touch it.” And the big wooden presses in the craft shops? “Lovely things. They live in the cupboard. Nobody takes a press the size of a chopping board on a walk.”

Fresh in the morning, pressed on the spot, still purple a few days later. That was the whole idea.

As an engraver, Jocelyn knew exactly where the problem was. “When I engrave a plate, it has to be clamped flat at all four corners, or the graver skips,” she says. “A flower is no different. It needs even pressure everywhere, straight away, with paper that pulls the water out. Not three weeks later on a bookshelf.”

Two gold-plated plates, four screws and a pair of pinking shears

So one evening in the spring of 2008, she went out to the workshop. She cut two little plates from gold-plated engraving blanks, drilled a hole in each corner and put a screw through every one. Between the plates she stacked blotting paper, cut with her mother’s old pinking shears so the edges wouldn’t stick together. On the lid she engraved a dandelion clock, Saskia’s favourite, the flower she always made a wish on.

Every press starts as a plain gold-plated sheet. Jocelyn saws, files and drills each little plate by hand before she engraves a single line.

The next Sunday, the press hung from the zip of Saskia’s backpack. Halfway through the gardens she picked a violet, and the two of them sat down on a bench and pressed it right there. A few days later, Saskia opened it at the kitchen table. “It was still purple,” Jocelyn says. “Exactly the purple it was in the gardens. She looked at me like I’d done magic.”

Saskia is 23 now. She still has that violet. It is on the first page of a little album that has grown into four.

How it works, in four steps

The press is 5 centimetres tall and 3.5 centimetres wide, a little smaller than a matchbox. It hangs on a keyring, a handbag strap or a backpack zip, so it is with you when you find the flower. Using it takes about a minute:

1 Pick it. 2 Lay it between the papers. 3 Tighten the four corners. 4 A few days later, open it. That’s all.

“Most people press their first flower in the car park after they’ve bought one,” Jocelyn says with a laugh. “Then they ring me three days later to tell me it worked.” What comes out goes into cards, bookmarks, lockets, frames and scrapbooks.

Some of the flowers mean a lot more than that. Jocelyn keeps an old biscuit tin under the bench, full of letters. She takes one out, from a woman in Timaru:

A few days later, the viola comes out flat and dry. And still purple.

Four flowers from Jocelyn’s own garden

Every press carries one of four designs, each engraved and painted in by Jocelyn herself:

Dandelion – the very first design, made for Saskia. “Every grandchild brings you a dandelion first,” Jocelyn says. Cherry Blossom – for the flowering cherry Graeme planted in the front garden the year they were married. Sunflower – for the row of sunflowers Graeme grows along the back fence every summer, taller than the washing line. Clover & Forget-Me-Not – for the back lawn, where Saskia spent whole afternoons hunting for four-leaf clovers.

Because every plate is engraved and painted by hand, no two presses come out exactly alike.

The four designs: Dandelion, Cherry Blossom, Sunflower and Clover & Forget-Me-Not.

18 springs, 3,041 presses – and not one sold online

Soon Saskia’s friends at school wanted one, then their mums, then the women from Jocelyn’s church. In November 2008 she took twenty to the Victorian Fête at the Heritage Celebrations. They were gone before lunch.

Every spring since, she has stood at the same stall at the Fête in the old harbour precinct with her presses, and every spring they have sold out. She keeps count in a school exercise book: 3,041 presses in 18 springs. “People asked me about a website every single year,” she says. “I always told them: come to Oamaru in November.”

Most presses are bought by grandmothers. A lot of them end up on a grandchild’s backpack.

What customers say

Why these are the last ones

There is nobody to take over the bench. “Saskia is studying to be a vet nurse,” Jocelyn says. “And you can’t learn engraving off a video. It takes years before your hand knows how hard to push.”

On the shelf above the bench sits the last box: 63 presses, engraved, painted and checked. Jocelyn tests every one herself. She tightens all four corners and makes sure both plates sit flat.

There will be no stall at the Fête this year, because her eyes can’t take a long day in the glare any more. So Saskia has put the last presses online, once. “I asked her: do you want them in a box in Dunedin, or out in people’s gardens?” Saskia says. Every press now goes out at half of what Jocelyn asked at the Fête. “I don’t need to make money on the last ones,” she says. “I want them out there, picking up flowers.”

Jocelyn and Saskia packing the last presses at the kitchen table. The moving boxes are already stacked in the hallway.

Where can you get Jocelyn’s presses?

Jocelyn’s presses are only available through County Craft, an online shop for small, independent makers, where Saskia looks after her nan’s corner. Only there will you get the original presses from Jocelyn’s workshop. Cheap lookalikes have started turning up online. They are cast and printed in a factory, not engraved, and up close they have nothing to do with Jocelyn’s work.

Every press comes with a stack of scalloped blotting papers, the little spanner and the keyring fittings, wrapped by hand by Saskia. Shipping is free across New Zealand, and every order is dispatched within 1–2 working days.

Only until 31 January – then the workshop closes

“By the end of January I’d like every one of them gone to somebody who’ll use it,” Jocelyn says, wrapping a press in tissue paper. “After that, it really is the end.” She looks out at the kōwhai by the workshop door. “Eighteen springs. Not bad for a press I made to stop a little girl crying.”

With the special price, the remaining 63 aren’t expected to last until the workshop closes. Anything left after 31 January will be dispatched while stocks last. After that, there will be no more.

Always on the keyring, always ready, even for a coffee in town. What comes out ends up in bookmarks, cards and frames.

Our verdict

Jocelyn’s pocket flower press solves a problem everyone who has ever picked a flower knows: by the time you get it home, it’s gone. Small enough for a keyring, engraved by hand in a little workshop in Oamaru, and simple enough for a five-year-old.

A little piece of real handwork with a lot of heart, and the last chance to own one. Thank you, Jocelyn!

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