Leafy House Plants by Benjamin Wurster

Nine selected book projects from the first Slanted × Kickstarter Mentoring & Publishing Program are live and ready to be funded. We are happy to present you the individual projects in the upcoming week and hope you’ll support one, two, or all of them. ;)

In 1899, the German botanist Udo Dammer wrote down his knowledge of the ins and outs of different house plants and published the book Zimmerblattpflanzen with 46 detailed plant illustrations. With Leafy House Plants, communication designer Benjamin Wurster created a modern new edition of this botanical encyclopaedia.

Benjamin is a communication designer, based in the South of Germany. He is working for various clients in the fields of culture, education and economy. Since 2017 Benjamin has been increasingly dealing with the topic of inspiration and has implemented several personal projects in addition to the client work he does.

We asked Benjamin a a few questions about his project:

Your project was selected from nearly 100 submissions to be part of the Slanted × Kickstarter mentoring & publishing program. What did you learn, what helped you the most?
I had already thought of launching a Kickstarter campaign for some time. So I was already familiar with the system and had read a lot about successful crowdfunding. However, Slanted was a great help to me in revising my production and cost planning so that I can later implement all components of the project at the highest level.

How did this project come about?
A few months ago, I started looking for materials that I could use as visual templates for limited edition lino prints. I had noticed the trend of more and bigger foliage plants in homes for quite some time. So I came across the publication Zimmerblattpflanzen by Udo Dammer with its 46 detailed plant illustrations. While working with this book, my desire for a reissue of the entire encyclopedia became bigger and bigger.

Why do you think there is a need for a re-edition of the publications of Udo Dammer?
Nowadays we can find all information about any topic on the internet and everyone can share the experiences they have made. But especially in these times, it’s often much more inspiring to get your information from old books that have already served many people before us.
I am very impressed by how much Prof. Udo Dammer already knew about the cultivation of house plants 120 years ago and how much of it is still up to date today. For this reason, I would like to publish one of his publications in English for the first time.

Why should our readers support your project? How do you hope to continue with it?
So that as many people as possible can benefit from this 120-year-old knowledge about indoor foliage plants and, therefore, can be more inspired in their homes. I hope that I can realize Leafy House Plants soon, and I am planning more free works in the future with these beautiful plant illustrations.

Thanks a lot for the insides and we keep our fingers crossed that your project will be financed!