Look closely at one of our arrangements, and you’ll notice something odd. The water in the vase isn’t going anywhere. Tip it, shake it, hold it upside down; it stays exactly where it is. That’s because it isn’t water at all. It’s a clear resin, poured and cured to look like water down to the last bubble and stem shadow. It’s the trick behind our whole hyper-real look, and people still lean in for a sniff when they spot it in person.
Here’s how it came to be (And Why It Took Four Years to Get Right).
A vase full of “water” in a German warehouse
Silk By Design started life in 1998 as The Silk Plant Company, importing artificial trees and plants. A year later, on a buying trip to Germany, our founder Sue spotted an arrangement with what looked like real water sitting in the vase. She picked it up expecting a wet mess. It was solid. Clear resin, set hard.
Back then, people held artificial flowers in place with floral tape, river stones, chicken wire pillows, glass gems, acrylic beads, or cellophane crumpled to look vaguely like water (other filler methods still commonly used today work the same way). None of it created the illusion properly. Even the best faux flowers gave the game away the moment you looked at the bottom of the vase and saw bare stems and wire.
Sue’s son Scott, who has since joined the business, has a way of putting it: those methods break the fourth wall. In theatre, that’s the moment an actor steps out of character and reminds the audience they’re watching a performance. A vase of exposed wire and beads does the same thing. It reminds you, instantly, that you’re looking at fake flowers. Resin that genuinely looks like water does the opposite. It holds the illusion together so completely that people stop questioning any of it, including the flowers.
Sue bought the arrangement and brought it home to South Africa to figure out how it was made.
Four years, a lot of test vases, and no Google
This was 1999. Internet access in South Africa was still new, and Google hadn’t yet caught on, having been founded in 1998. There was almost nothing written down about what the resin was, let alone how it worked. So Sue found a chemist willing to work through it with her, formulation by formulation, over four years.
Scott still remembers growing up around half-filled test vases and resin discs scattered through the house. Some were left inside, some put out in the sun to see how the UV affected them over time. A lot of it went wrong before it went right. Some batches shrank, so the disc rattled loose inside the vase. Some cured too fast and cracked the glass. Some turned yellow. Some never cured properly at all, or took so long you’d be waiting weeks.
It took four years of failed batches before the chemist and Sue landed on a formulation that actually held up.
From one client to the largest in South Africa
That formulation became the foundation of Silk By Design, founded in 2003. In the early days, everything was sourced locally, and every arrangement went to a single client, which gave Sue the room to refine the process without the pressure of a wider market watching.
Since then, Silk By Design has grown into the largest producer of fixed artificial flower arrangements using resin “fake water” in South Africa, supplying homes, hotels, restaurants, retail spaces, and commercial projects across the country.
And we haven’t stopped refining it. Twenty-five years on, the process is still being improved.
Why fake water actually matters
It’s easy to think of it as a novelty, and it does stop people in their tracks. But it solves real problems too:
- It creates the illusion properly. Real water clarity, without the wire and empty gaps other methods leave behind.
- Realistic quantity. We add enough resin to fill the vase up to a realistic level, further reinforcing the realism.
- It fixes the arrangement in place. Once it’s set, nobody’s shifting a stem out of position, so the look is incredibly consistent.
- No coffee table rings. No water, no white circles, no spills to mop up.
- Low Maintenance. No need to change/refresh the water.
- Stands the test of time: Arrangements set in resin can look as good as new for many years.
- Ready to travel. It’s solid enough to survive proper packaging and shipping, including our export orders.
- Backed by real styling expertise. Getting the arrangement right before it sets is a skill in itself, built up over 25+ years.
Worth knowing: fake water fixes the arrangement in place, but it doesn’t lock you out of it completely. You can still add extra stems to build the display out further. And if something does go wrong down the line, like a vase being dropped or cracked, we can usually reset an arrangement for you. Typically, the vase itself needs to be replaced and the stems trimmed down, but we’ll talk you through the best way forward for your specific piece.
Still the same idea Sue brought home in 1999
Every arrangement we make with fake water traces back to that trip to Germany and four years of trial and error with a chemist willing to stick with it. It’s a small detail with an outsized effect; and after 25 years of refining it, we think we do it better than anyone else in South Africa.