The Encyclopedia of Flowers II

"The Encyclopedia of Flowers II" is the second volume of Azuma Makoto and Shunsuke Shiinoki's ongoing photographic catalogue of cut flowers, expanding the first book's method to a still larger range of specimens.

Seigensha published this volume in Japan as a 544-page paperback covering roughly 1,200 species across some 15,000 individual stems, again indexed by scientific and Japanese name. Shiinoki photographed many flowers from directly overhead, showing the layered structure of each petal, stamen, and grain of pollen, and also from the side to register the plant's own structural weight against gravity, all under natural light. Kenya Hara returned to design the volume, working here with Kaoru Matsuno and Tomoko Nishi of Nippon Design Center. Much of what filled the first volume had already vanished by the time this one went to print, replaced by newly encountered species.

Azuma and Shiinoki, both from Fukuoka Prefecture, have worked together since 2000 as the Tokyo flower shop Jardins des Fleurs. Azuma's "Botanical Sculpture" installations, begun around 2005, and the pair's collective AMKK, founded in 2009, have since been shown in New York, Paris, Düsseldorf, Milan, Shanghai, and Mexico City, among other cities.