Irish Elegans

William Seltzer Rice

Irish Elegance is a hybrid tea rose that is described as having veined salmon-flame buds which open peach and then fade to salmon-buff. Five petals create this flat bloom rose which is very fragrant. Rice loved all of nature including the fleeting bloom of this tea rose. He placed the bouquet in a ceramic pot probably crafted by his own hands and offset the delicate colors against a black background. Rice created a number of floral color woodcuts and produced some of them using the one-block or white line technique he learned from Cora Boone. In this image, he defined the delicate petals with black outlines causing the roses to pop forward in the picture plane.