ABOUT Real Flower Jewelry

Real Flower Jewelry has been well known in Hawaii for over 30 years as a pioneer in preservation of tropical flowers, based on Peter Honeyman’s original concept of “The Permanent Fresh Cut Flower”.

He became keenly aware of visitors, leaving the airports on their way home, wanting a last-minute memento of their wonderful experience. Invariably, this was a fresh cut tropical flower, usually an orchid, alone or in a lei.

He knew that by the time those visitors arrived home, their so emotionally important “departure-flowers” would be sorry looking, wilted, even dying, and all too soon discarded. He saw in this an opportunity to create real flowers that are wearable – permanently! Such flowers should retain their original beauty, yet be durable and pliable enough to wear, repeatedly, looking as if fresh cut. They had to be distinctively different to, more practical than, and not confused with, dried flowers, glass, porcelain, plastic, silk, or paper. It took many years to achieve what so many derided as looking for the Holy Grail. 

Nevertheless, his persistence finally was rewarded with wide-spread repeated programs on T.V. shopping networks in London, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Sidney Australia, and most notably in Tokyo, Japan.

Over time the growing demands of the television studios were reaching the stage where “the tail was wagging the dog”. We then consolidated the business in Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii, “The Orchid Isle”, where grew the best orchids for our purposes. By 2005, we had withdrawn from T.V. shopping sales. All processing and creation of product and design were centered only in Hilo, from where we focused solely on Hawaii’s tourist industry.

With no more rushed last minute overnight international flights to meet unscheduled program changes, this focus created a smaller, more compact and efficient business. This proved critical to surviving the The Great Recession of 2006-2009, plus the devastating volcanic eruption of Kilauea, which obliterated all our orchid nursery resources overnight by burying them under 20 meters of molten lava!

In March 2020, when the COVID-19 spread so relentlessly, we were faced with no orchid products, on which our business had been built, but also the total loss of customers when the virus destroyed all tourism to our islands.

We have to reinvent ourselves.

We are excited at the prospects of our new, and very different products, plus the challenge of taking them to markets worldwide rather than the traditional attitude of the market returning to Hawaii.

We view what has happened as presenting wonderful new opportunities, as evidenced by our new collection of art prints of our former orchid products in floralartprints.com. Each of our items now includes, at no charge, one of our notecards from that collection to complete your gift presentation.

Enjoy!