March 20, 2025 • 35 mins
Floral designer Emily Thompson has a very different vocabulary from many florists: she creates thickets, heaps, vapors, gusts and gales, using birds, beasts, branches, trees and flora. Her creations for runway fashion shows, gala events and the White House evoke meadows, forests and fields. Fifteen years after her disruptive arrival on the floral scene, she has published a book documenting her work. Martha and Emily talk about their floral obsessions and creating unforgettable work in the most ephemeral of arts.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Emily Thompson, an artist with the background in sculpture, came
into the New York City floral scene fifteen years ago,
and her wildly imaginative designs made her a sensational hit
with her fashion and design clients. Her creations evoke meadows, fields, forests,
often of large scale. She has designed work for The
(00:25):
White House, for couture shows, for MoMA, and for my magazine,
Martha Stewart Living. And now she has published a beautiful book,
Emily Thompson Flowers, that reveals her unique style. As Nancy
Hass writes in the forward to the book, she is
happy to perform without the traditional florist's safety net of prettiness.
(00:47):
She rebuffs the reassuring pastels and fluffy pedals to embrace
a more appropriate, raw, authentic elegance reflecting these times. It's
so lovely to see you again, Emily, and welcome to
my podcast. Thank you so much for having you look
exactly the same as I saw you a couple of
years ago. I think I haven't seen you for a
couple of years, but and I ate at Nursery Kitchen
(01:11):
the other night with a group of friends, and I
missed your floral shop in the front. Yeah, you say
you don't miss retail.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
No, but it did give a certain theater to the experience.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
It did, it did. It was always nice nursery kitchen.
Is this charming French restaurant way downtown Manhattan. But I
love flowers and I love plants, and I have and
I looked through your book very very carefully this morning
again on my way here. Your work is creative, it's dramatic.
(01:42):
It's so unique. You have described it as a kind
of science fiction. And I loved reading everything you wrote
in the book and your title pages just so strange
and evocative of all the plants you use and the
unusual way that you put together material. What I want
(02:02):
to know in this podcast, and I want everybody who's
listening to get this book. It's called Emily Thompson Flowers.
This beautiful tome with a black fabric cover. Now, these
flowers are all kind of Is this in mud?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yes, we call it the muck.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
I wish you could come to my house right now.
You know why we are dredging my pond that has
not been dredged since it was probably created one hundred
years ago, or maybe one hundred and fifty years ago.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Will you save me some muck in the bottom.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I will save you the much? How much do you
want to? You know?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Bushel bushel on a pack. Okay, so what the cover,
how the cover was made was that I held the
camellia blossoms from January, I think until possibly as late
as April, rotting away in the studio in this beautiful
pile of muck, and they's really transformed into something new.
So what you're seeing here on the cover is what
(02:58):
you see again on the end papers in a previous stage.
You can see this pink one has just kind of
started to go all wacky, right, but there's sort of
like an oil slick happening from all of the seepage
and things transforming.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Did you grow the camellias? No, unfortunately, I have a
lot of camellias growing, and I got I was so worried.
Do you get your camelias from Nuccio's in Pasadena?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
I have, but mostly our market is pulling them from
growers some North Carolina and Georgia.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Really, oh oh, those are the outside ones that Okay,
the perennial is I love camelias and I didn't know
that this is what happens to them in muck. Now
that I have all this muck, maybe I'll try some
of your details.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Well, I think I wanted to go to the primordial,
you know, and I wanted to connect these things that
are so of this moment and fleeting with something kind
of forever and ancient and that type kind of cycle
of life and death, and have that be like instantly
clear that that's what you were entering when you photo
grabbed your book. Some of the images are from various
(04:03):
fashion shows, so there's a range of photographers and an
archived work. But I have an amazing photographer, Julianne Nash,
who works on my team. So a lot of the
original work that was made for this book was made
together with her.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Well, I loved reading who is Nancy Haas? I think
I know her.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, she writes for the Time, so quite a bit
a lot of design writing.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Okay, she's so great. Yeah, and her forward is or
her introduction is really spot on. I think about your work,
And she said, for all the cacophony of Thompson's metier,
there's one thing that she doesn't have, however, time, and
that's what distinguishes her art from most other sorts of
sculpture that has to be executed very very fast, because
(04:44):
your plant material is so fragile. Yes, and you collect
it and then you put it out for a fashion
show or for an art exhibit or for a bar.
My favorite, my favorite favorite arrangement is that beautiful frothy
I think you called it not for of, you called
it missed of. Yes, that is my favorite thing.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
It is a magical material.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Oh my gosh, I grow a lot OFAs. I now
have every color of China's growing and it is just
one of my favorite. Oh there it is.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
It's so hard to find some of the more unusual
colors nowadays, and the and they have that where they
really flower like abundantly one year and then the next
year it's all leafed out. So we we some years
have just this paucity with no pink, no green, and
you just end up with this flat burgundy. Not my favorite,
but still I.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Have the churchreuse green, and I have the burgundy, but
I have the rose colored. I have all the colors
and pale pale pink. But in Maine, because my house
is so big up there and I have huge containers,
I go around the island around Mountainserve Island, and there's
lots oftina's growing there, really and I and I knock
(05:58):
on a door if they have a beautiful tree out
and I said, can I trade you something for your cotinas?
Oftentimes they'll say yes' because I'll do the pruning. I'll
prune their bushet. It'll be nicer next year. But you
must do that too, Yes, I mean you see something
somewhere that you have to have, you knock on the door.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yes, we do.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
We do.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
There's a lot of that kind of personal relationships that
end up getting you to a place with much more
special materials. If you're not that kind of florist or artist,
you're not going to make anything. You're never going to
get the treasures. And so it's these like fifteen years
of cultivating these amazing guys in the market for one thing,
which is a huge resource to New York Flower.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
And they appreciate your craziness, don't they.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Absolutely it entertains them.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, do they call you and say I have something?
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Every once in a while I get the call. And
I've also I've struggled too, because the branch guys, they
really need everything to fit in the truck, and I'm
always like, can I have the contorted, wind swept ancient thing?
And they say, well, first of all that's expensive, and
second of all, you're ruining my load in my truck,
so you're gonna have to pay for like half that
truckload for the one stupid branch you want. So anyway,
(07:06):
it's a struggle, but it's a very joyous chase.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Are you trying to express in your creations?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
I mean, I think for me, the muse is always
the materials, So to drive people to see these treasures
the way I see them, just to find that kind
of extraordinary, exquisite, infinite experience of nature. So that's the
general general thing, because as we all know, this is
the destruction of planet human existence. So there's that always there,
(07:37):
floating around in there and then but I also think
there's something where I want people to understand them as
living things. So whenever we design, we want things to
have movement, contortion, having them talking to themselves, not to
us much less about you know, a big display only
for human eyes. It's sort of like a plant world
unto itself.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
So your book is divided into sections, thickets, cascades, heaps, vapor,
birds and beasts, gusts and gales. What connects and differentiates
all these different segments.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Well, I think that as we were developing the book,
that these are some themes that really run through a
lot of work, and a lot of times these themes
are combined, so I think a lot of them connect easily.
You'll see one heap that also dissipates into mist. And
I think that they all kind of describe materials on
mass and how they change, how they lie on the ground,
(08:31):
how they lift up from the ground. And I think
those themes are always present somehow.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So you look at this book and in the luckily
in the back of the book a couple pages of
small photographs identifying the plant material in each of the
large photos, which is good because because I had no
idea that that would look like that.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
But yeah, I felt like it was kind of unfair
to not share the material names.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
No, I love that you did. But every chapter is
named thickets or missed or I love, I love all
of this, and you just is that white pine.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
It's white pine. And some of these heirloom chrysanthemums that
have I think the I don't know what amount of
pressure I have been putting on all the growers that
I ever connect with. But the chrysanthemums are having a
real renaissance right now, and it's just such an exquisite
flower that for us. The football ones that I'm sure
(09:25):
you think you know, remembering like prom in all decades,
they're banned from import.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
I know you can't get them to grow them.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I did get contraband one.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
You have to do tissue culture and you have to
grow them. And where are those from?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
This is the cred Light Farm, which is a Catskills farm.
They're really fantastic growers. I mean you'll find that in
my way into the materials and into our compositions is
often like a repetition, just a repetition finding a way
to jump from like one color into the same color
in another form, or the same form in another color.
So there's a lot of that kind of pairing.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Well, you started as a sculptor before you began your
work in flowers, which in your book you use the
word florist tree a lot. I had never used that
word florest tree. So is that the art of working
with flowers? Yeah, it's like I think it's kind of
like forest.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Try right.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
So it's in the dictionary florest tree, I hope. So,
I don't know. I haven't looked it up, but it's
I've never used that word before, and I thought, I
think it's such a nice descriptive word for flower people. Yeah,
and don't expect to get a tight little bouquet of
white roses from our guests. You're going to get she
(10:39):
brought me something very beautiful today. I'll put it in
front of the camera. So this is mimosa and poppies.
That's the poppy pods. These are the leaves of the mimosa,
which are so beautiful. I love how that looks. It's
so so fabulous. But that's that's like a formal flower
arrangement for you.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, sure, a gift, but something that just is screaming
of what's best of the season. Church.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I know it goes with my sweater.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I'm so happy in furry like this.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
It's so perfect. I love it. So let's talk about
the New York City flower market. What's your typical routine.
This is on twenty eighth Street between seventh and sixth
(11:31):
and a little bit over towards Fifth and Broadway, right, Yeah,
and I've been going there for many, many, many years.
It does change. There seem to be fewer shops now
than there used to be, but it's still very fascinating.
It is.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
If anybody go, Yes, everyone is welcome, and you can
you can probably get something with cash if you're aggressive enough.
You have to tolerate being ignored and climb over all
the various florists who don't want you there. Yeah, but no,
everybody's welcome. It's a bunch of wholesalers whose doors are
open to the public.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
This is where the florists of New York City and
the surrounding areas get their flowers. Yes, they're flown in
from all over the world.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
But also one of the things that's really spectacular and
special about our market is that some of our branch
suppliers have farms all up and down the Eastern Seaboard,
so we can follow the earliest forced branches that they
cut in December of the quints.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
They're like down at North Carolina exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
They cut their quints after it's had maybe two frosts
and their buds are started to develop, so then they
force that in barns. But as the season warms, they
follow the branches from south to north, all the way
up into Canada, and the scale of those materials is
really enormous. So for florists like me who want everything
to be massive, then that's an enormous tool and also
(12:55):
of a local, seasonal exquisite quality. So that's really not
common in flower markets over the world.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Sometimes maybe in San Francisco I saw stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
They have some good stuff, but not as much, not
as much, and they don't have the cold winters, so
they don't get the.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Great high dranges I remember in San Francisco. But New
York is it's so and it's so I love all
the people who work there too. But a Foliage Garden
is one that I love, and I love fantastic and
I used to get my beautiful gates there, the folding
gates which are like accordion gates made out of willow.
(13:32):
And you can also buy plants there, which I do.
I when I when I'm looking for something weird, I'll
go and look there for a weird orchid. Oh, they
have fabulous succulents.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Yeah, and you mentioned Foliage Garden. She has these incredible
greenhouses where she grows plants to oversize, so we get
to see all these incredible tropicals, and she's an incredible
eye the people too. It's a huge resource for us
because when we have to make something crazy, we have
this huge teams of people with all kinds of weird
skills that can come and join us, so we don't
(14:05):
have to figure it all out ourselves. For example, we
built these Frankenstein trees for a project. I needed to
get twenty four to thirty foot trees and you can't
do that, I mean you can't. We couldn't have four five.
They needed to look live and I'm not going to
work with fake materials ever. So what we figured out
(14:26):
to do was to get a trunk, a pine trunk.
We wanted pine trees, a pine forest, impossible to do.
We got a giant trunk, bolted it to a platform,
and then we stuck a sapling on top, so the
silhouettes were all of the proper heights and then we
could easily mask them. And the whole crew from Major
Wholesale helped me build them. So I had just these
(14:49):
guys who were the same guys who cut the trees
being the ones who bolted to them to the platform,
and they really know these trees and how to cull
them from the wild so that they're not damaging the
environment there. They're really knowledgeable, so it's pretty incredible.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Oh, you should come up. We're cutting down about a
ten acre parcel right now because we've had the ash disease.
So we have monster ash trees lying on the ground.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Now.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
My guys are My guys are cutting them to the ground,
and then we're going to do our grinding thing and
we grind into composts and we mix it with the
horse manure and the donkey manure and the chicken manure,
and in three years we have black gold best soil.
But it's hard to keep up with the dying trees.
We now have a beach problem. Beach trees. You're gonna
(15:36):
have some really beautiful skeleton beach trees, you know that.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yes, I mean that's so awful, But you're going to
find a way.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
You're going to have to use some of those in
some of your decks.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
A friend of mine is cutting down his larch and
larch we got asked to do a project at Chelsea
flower shows, so his dead larch is somehow going to
find its way the Chelsea.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Over to England.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, he's there, So it's going to come from not
too far away. And there's this memory I have of
a constant Spry arrangement. She's this very famous early twentieth century.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
She is our model arranger, and you mentioned her a
lot in the book.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
And she's extraordinarily creative. The work that she did was
so groundbreaking, but each material she would select and use
in its own way, and I think that's one of
the ways I really follow her. But the larch stuck
in my mind?
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Is that going to be? Is that going to be
one of your like the focal point of your.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
I don't don't know yet, but I can't help but
want it to be.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
So when do you start setting up Chelsea?
Speaker 2 (16:40):
That's in May and we have a very quick turnaround,
and of course I'm a stranger to that landscape, and
I have to really, I have to really do a
lot of preliminary Yeah, what.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Is your goal there? They ask you to do.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
There are a few florists who are doing like just
a display. It's not for judging. It's not as vast
does the garden displays. But there are going to be
three of us, a couple of other really interesting florists
and I not finalized, so I can't say any names,
but they were each going to make something in this
one marquee that should be very strange and interesting. Each
(17:15):
of us has a very different approach and none of
us are traditional by any means, so it should be cool.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Look at this project. There's one picture here, what was that?
Speaker 2 (17:23):
That was an Ula Johnson that was at the Brooklyn Museum.
That was her fashion show for We did it in fall.
You can see it's all full of for samples.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Rys anthems lying just the flowers lying on the floor
in many, many, many colors. Yeah, the models walked in
between all these things. They're not in water or anything,
so that is again ephemeral, but it's so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
The best part of this was the thing we had
to kind of do at the last minute. It's not
featured in these you can see them a little bit.
Is these queen limes inias? Yeah, those are the thing
that are the two tones, so they take you can
jump from one color to another and they give you
this transitional, exquisite kind of color. We also had these
incredible carnations in here that are like the color of
(18:05):
a bruise and they're so.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
So it's not just chrysanthemums, it's also it's a.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Lot of stuff. There's a lot of coxcomb. It felt
really coral like, but also we're really trying to mimic
the kind of growth of light.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Alosha and coxcomb. I hated years ago, and now I love.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
I've really come around.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
So I went to Europe and I got brought home
a whole lot of different seeds because mixed with other things,
it looks so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Their colors are like nothing. Yeah, those oranges and peaches,
and then the acidy greens and the black black. Yeah,
their exquisite.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
You get many ideas out of this book. So when
you create work for fashion shows such as Jason Wu
who's very avant garde and Ula Johnson, which comes first?
Does the fashion inspire the project? Do you get to
see the fashion first or do they tell you what
they want?
Speaker 2 (18:54):
There's a lot of back and forth. A lot of
the time, there's kind of a somebody who's been developing
some kind of vague mood boardy kind of plan, a
creative director, show designer, and then we come in and
we try to push them to our whims and to
some great successes and sometimes we follow more where they
(19:15):
need us to go. It really depends on the client
and the and the moment.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
So when you go to India to do a job,
how many people go with you?
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Well, I went a number of times in the planning
and preparing and researching. It was a really incredible client
who wanted to really wanted to show her community of
you know, people who throw lavish weddings a really different way.
So one of the biggest challenges is that we chose
to source the flowers in India, which flowers in India
are grown for a lot of purposes and huge quantities,
(19:45):
but they're not grown for the purposes of weddings and events.
So often their quality isn't a purpose.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Mostly chrysanthemums and colndulism.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
A lot of roses actually, but the for the fragrance
and just for the heads, and people don't cut the
flowers with long stems. They're used for the heads and
strong or so. Sourcing was extremely difficult. The supply chain
just isn't there for the things that we were looking for.
Plants come on a truck, but the truck it takes
three weeks. While the truck the plants sit by in
(20:15):
a dark truck in what kind of circumstances, and also
planted in clay, so every plant that you think is
five pounds is thirty pounds. So their challenges were so unknowable,
and the surprises and the confusion was so vast. But
it was such an exquisite project.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
How many people came to the wedding? How many guess?
Speaker 2 (20:36):
I think? Oh, I think they had about eight hundred.
It was amazing because we were basically making like six
fashion shows at once of totally different character and different
parts of the experience. Any of those in the books,
they're not in the book. You can see a few
of them on either our Instagram or our website. People
walked through a tunnel that we entirely created. That was
(20:57):
a forest, like a psychedelic forest that had been the driveway.
And we built these trees out of a vine called
Giloy vine that's like used in Iurvedic medicine and Ashoka trees,
exquisite trees. But it turns out it's illegal to prune.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Anything oh in India.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Oh really, or even on your own domemestic property. You
have to be extremely strategic and careful and knowledgeable about
how to do that?
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Wow, Well, yeah, you got it.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
I got it, I got it. I've always find a way.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
What are your favorite plants to use in your work?
Speaker 2 (21:33):
You'll see a lot of them over and over again
in the book. But I think I go for things
with really dramatic sculptural form. We were talking about this
Calanchoe leaves that I come to again and again. They
have exquisite curves and leaf forms that to me, they
come right off of a classical ornament, and so they're
instantly evoking something kind of formal, and I think that's
(21:55):
incredibly interesting.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
And they're also easy to use, absolutely because you're just
break them off the break them off the branch. They
break a snap. I love them.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
We use them over and over too. Yeah, we don't
get to recycle a lot of our flowers. Usually it's
just the compost pit.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
The book's quite large. It has how many pages? Two
hundred and fifty pages about and page after page after
page of amazing ideas and amazing material choices. So what
big jobs do you have coming up? Talk about any
of them?
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Well, we are doing a couple of things for fashion Week.
Not massive, but interesting, I think, and it's kind of
like I keep all of these pet ideas in my
pocket and I wait for the right unsuspecting client and
then then we have these kind of crazy plans that
nobody's ever seen. So we're going to be doing a
couple of those things this coming February.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
It's coming up. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
We just came off of a crazy year where we
did a wedding in India and then among many other projects,
then we were invited to be part of this public
art festival, this Flower Public Art Festival Cordova, Spain, and
it's about the seventh year I believe that we participated
and their five people were invited and we were asked
(23:08):
to design at the courtyard of the Great Mosque of Cordeva,
which I guess one of the most beautiful white Earth.
And we chose to do these designs on the facade
because it's very austere and massive monolithic facade. When the
mosque was first built, they were open windows, these alcoves,
and they bricked up these alcoves as the mosque transformed
(23:32):
eventually into a cathedral, and it created this just like wall,
this kind of imposing and completely without ornament wall. So
we kind of used our designs to create these windows
back into it. And it was one of my favorite
projects I've ever done. And the one thing that was
really exciting about it is that it was basically a
(23:53):
public art piece. So the five thousand people that were
already going to the mosque every single day were passed
seeing our work and interacting with our work and having
this experience of it. And that's extremely rare. In florestry.
We work in a private world of mainly luxury. It's
all invite only any ephemeral, ephemeral, yeah, and so it's
(24:15):
really only kept in photographs. And then in this very
rare situation where we were on display for about five days,
what's that? That is a Dutchman's pipe?
Speaker 1 (24:24):
See I have that growing and main it's so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
They're so stinky, Yeah, they are that.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
They are so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I think that that combination of something painful and something
exquisite is often paired in my interests, the sort of
repulsion and I think a lot of obviously there's always seduction,
there's always seduction in designing with flowers, but to have
that pushing back a little bit, a little bit of fear,
some snakes.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Something you see a container rarely things are mounded on
the ground. There are containers holed holding these things, but
they seem to be almost floating, many of them, which
are so beautiful. For Scythia another common common shrub, but
you use it so beautifully.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
It's a much loathed I think, uh plant because we
are desperate for something and it's the first thing, so
we take what we can get. But the wonderful thing
about Forcythia is it's so flexible, and so you can
create these kind of wonderful whips and you can really
change like a willow. Yeah that's also has willow, but
for Cythia also has beautiful leaves in the fall. So
as a straw, it's quite elegant.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
I just planted a whole row. Somebody gave me some
mature for Ccythia bushes. I just planted a whole, big,
long row of it, because why not. Yeah, you know,
there's there's I have so much space. It's nice to
have that. And then I was thinking, I guess I
was thinking, like Emily Tompson, maybe I'll do something with it.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
So your challenges are great. You have you do have
to have a big truck or a couple of trucks
right for all this stuff, and then do you have
to take do you have to disassemble everything the minute
job is over?
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Usually yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
But you know a lot of people think that's such
a painful thing about this job, but I disagree entirely,
because we just get to build it all over again,
and all of our work this ephemerality, like we don't
have to keep living with it. You can make something
and then you walk away, and that there's something really
freeing and I think psychologically powerful about that experience is
that it's this creation, creation, creation, and then it's all
(26:35):
just falls into a heap of compost and rebuilds.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Yeah, how do you live with plant material in your
own house?
Speaker 2 (26:43):
I am a collector, are It's true? And I have
a very very new garden that is incredibly exciting. Where's
that Just a little brownstone in crownd Heights, Brooklyn?
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Oh really? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
So we have a little tiny garden and I'm bringing
in a tree. I'm trying to get the biggest tree
I can get, get it root, prune so I can
fit it through the door. And there's insane amount of
bulbs that I endlessly go crazy for. And then the
rest is sort of just experiments.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
In Bedford, all the road sides are very messy. I
don't know have you been driven around Bedford ever. I
have about a mile of road frontage onto two roads.
And this year I decided I'm clearing. I don't want
any I don't want any thickets. I called a supplier,
a bulb supplier that I use all the time, and
at the end, like this is in January cold, and
(27:28):
I said, do you have any leftover bulbs because nobody's
going to be planting with this zero temperatures. And I
got to think about eighty thousand small bulbs. So now
I am crocus or what everything crocus and china doxia
and or enthologums and a muscaris of all colors, and
so I am going to plant. I'm going to shame
the neighbors and the neighborhood into fixing up their roadside.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Like a piece of public art.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
It is, it is, so I can't wait. We're doing
it next week. The gift I only thought of that
brider to your book, really, yeah, because I know, really
you're so inspirational with all these massive, massive projects that
you're doing amongst your contemporaries in the floral design world.
Who are the people that you collaborate with or draw
inspiration from.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
One thing that's happened that's kind of extraordinary is that
so many of the people that have come through my
door and trained with me have gone on to open
their own businesses, and some of them are doing just
such amazing work. And they are just like my children,
my nieces. They're not a lot of nephews, but mostly nieces.
So that's one of the really wonderful things about this community,
(28:32):
because we're really trying to push a different way, a
seasonal really an eye towards the seasonal, pushing away from
any flower at any time, a very kind of idiosyncratic
design sensibility, and so those There's a woman a couple
in California, Wren McDonald de Blasia renco Is her company
that's like crazy psychedelic Hawaiian and Sophia Marino Bungey of
(28:54):
issa Issa. She's amazing, does really exquisite, kind of wild
and understated. There's some friends in London, Wagner Kreutsch. Do
you know this guy?
Speaker 1 (29:05):
I've seen He's.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
A great friend. He came to India with us and
he's really quite an artist. And there's other friends in Singapore.
It's starting to be a whole web of us.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Oh, here's one of my favorite rooms of pool room
at the Four Seasons. I remember when you did all
these when they first started after Carbone took over. Right, Wow, that.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Was one of my favorite projects. Oh, I bet we
really developed all these designs over time as they as
they opened. They reopened the old Four Seasons and everything's landmarked.
It's the only landmarked interiors in New York, and so
there's only so many things they can change. And the
flowers are the thing. But we did build this thing
in the pool for a long period of time. I
don't know if you ever got to see which we
(29:48):
did that, but I always thought it was like Philip
Johnson's soul escaping his body. It was this misty contortion,
this like kind of vortex of vines and branches in blossom,
very loose an airy, and but it was like a
little tornado in the middle.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Of the room. There's a photo in the book of
a bunch of ladders, old wooden painters ladders and then vines.
Is that what kind of vine is? Vine? And wasps
nests Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
This was a fashion show for an accessories company called
brother Belly's. My friend Aura helped conceive this and they
released butterflies into the design. Oh my gosh, you can
see them in.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
So what are the tools that you use that you
have in your bag?
Speaker 2 (30:35):
At is my ars? Clippers? I just love those they
are They're so good for cutting branches actually for a
small tool. I have secatary secuataries, I have knives, I
have wirecutters, I have but for the most part, florest
tools are what they can wear on their belt. We
work with like spit and vinegar.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
It's It's one of the things I love about this
work is it's so weirdly creative in the problem solving realm.
You have to fix crazy problems with nothing. You have
a piece of tape and you have to solve the
whole of thing falling over before the guest arrives and
under ridiculous time circumstances and off and out in the
field somewhere. That kind of we can do it quality
(31:18):
is something I love about this work, and also the
relationship between that and the kind of quote unquote humble
understanding of this as a domestic art we work in
this crazy way with massive installations, but as an art
that I think, until very recently was considered really chopped liver,
you know, not something that was of an elevated status,
(31:40):
something with low pay.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
I don't know. I've been watching the evolution of floral
design for a long long time in New York, and
you really did change it. I mean you changed a
lot and made it, I think more interesting, because it's
great if you can use a million flowers, you know,
spend it on strings from the ceiling and you know,
(32:03):
and but it's different. You'rs is different. And I love
the incorporation of trees and branches and weeds and all
kinds of material that you would never ever expect to
see indoors any place.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Well, I think I wanted to feel real. Some part
of this fantasy that we make is still always, always,
at least almost all of it is real. We don't
work with artifice. The artifice isn't all in the transformation
of the context and like bring it into a weird place.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
So there's there's a place in la that I go
to every time I tropics ink you go to the tropics.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Yeah, amazing, as you loved it.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
There. Ryan, He's one of my favorite Ryans in the
whole world. Do you get stuff from him?
Speaker 2 (32:45):
I mean, it's too difficult to get it here from
there and those crazy baobab looking things, but they've really
set a tone. People are really paying attention. I'm so
thrilled because it's like people are understanding this kind of
Jurassic esthetic, getting away from really boring commercial stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Yeah, but he's He taught me how to take care
of my staghorns because I inherited some really amazing staghorns
that are like a hundred years old, so I have
to learn how. He says, throw a banana in for
it to eat.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Really, Yeah, do you have to hose them off every day?
Speaker 1 (33:20):
And no, every day I water my staghorns because they
like they like water.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, it's not a good interior plant, no, for just exactly.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
And I have giant hanging ones now that I started myself,
and I hang them outside in the summer. But I
finally found a place in a greenhouse where I could
hang them.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
There's a grower in Hawaii that I actually visited once.
He was quite a character. He had wild boars that
he was actually penned. He'd rescued them as babies, and
when we got there they got out. Oh my god,
I swear I had nothing to do.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
What were they eating?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Everything? They everything? He had the most, This absolute cacophony
of a greenhouse with just incredible treasure is just buried
in it, but wild because it's just him taking care
of everything. She had a xanadu philodendron that was acid green,
that is so rare. And he sends me the cut
leaves for a fortune, like seven dollars a leave.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Have you been at the Amazon spheres in Seattle?
Speaker 2 (34:13):
No, Oh, you have to go there.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Oh, don't forget to go there because they also have
amazing greenhouses with very rare plants. And you would not
think Amazon would have such a place, but they do
very rare, exciting things, and their walls of plants are
very beautiful. They're living walls.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
I have to go.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yeah, very extraordinary. Well, it's so much fun to talk
to you. I want to I want to see everything
you do. Tell me when you're doing something in New
York that I can to come and take a peek at.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Fantastic.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Please come visit with us again, and good luck in Chelsea.
I can't wait to see that and all the other
things that Emily Thompson creates for herself and for her clients.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Thank you so much, and thank you for everything you've
done to lay the groundwork for what I do, because
it's it's been very part to me.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Oh I'm nice.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
You can follow her at Emily Thompson Flowers. Thank you
so much.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
And Emily's new book is available now for pre order
on www dot fiden dot com that's p h A
I D O N and on April ninth, wherever books
are sold.
Emily Thompson, an artist with the background in sculpture, came
into the New York City floral scene fifteen years ago,
and her wildly imaginative designs made her a sensational hit
with her fashion and design clients. Her creations evoke meadows, fields, forests,
often of large scale. She has designed work for The
(00:25):
White House, for couture shows, for MoMA, and for my magazine,
Martha Stewart Living. And now she has published a beautiful book,
Emily Thompson Flowers, that reveals her unique style. As Nancy
Hass writes in the forward to the book, she is
happy to perform without the traditional florist's safety net of prettiness.
(00:47):
She rebuffs the reassuring pastels and fluffy pedals to embrace
a more appropriate, raw, authentic elegance reflecting these times. It's
so lovely to see you again, Emily, and welcome to
my podcast. Thank you so much for having you look
exactly the same as I saw you a couple of
years ago. I think I haven't seen you for a
couple of years, but and I ate at Nursery Kitchen
(01:11):
the other night with a group of friends, and I
missed your floral shop in the front. Yeah, you say
you don't miss retail.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
No, but it did give a certain theater to the experience.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
It did, it did. It was always nice nursery kitchen.
Is this charming French restaurant way downtown Manhattan. But I
love flowers and I love plants, and I have and
I looked through your book very very carefully this morning
again on my way here. Your work is creative, it's dramatic.
(01:42):
It's so unique. You have described it as a kind
of science fiction. And I loved reading everything you wrote
in the book and your title pages just so strange
and evocative of all the plants you use and the
unusual way that you put together material. What I want
(02:02):
to know in this podcast, and I want everybody who's
listening to get this book. It's called Emily Thompson Flowers.
This beautiful tome with a black fabric cover. Now, these
flowers are all kind of Is this in mud?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yes, we call it the muck.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
I wish you could come to my house right now.
You know why we are dredging my pond that has
not been dredged since it was probably created one hundred
years ago, or maybe one hundred and fifty years ago.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Will you save me some muck in the bottom.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I will save you the much? How much do you
want to? You know?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Bushel bushel on a pack. Okay, so what the cover,
how the cover was made was that I held the
camellia blossoms from January, I think until possibly as late
as April, rotting away in the studio in this beautiful
pile of muck, and they's really transformed into something new.
So what you're seeing here on the cover is what
(02:58):
you see again on the end papers in a previous stage.
You can see this pink one has just kind of
started to go all wacky, right, but there's sort of
like an oil slick happening from all of the seepage
and things transforming.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Did you grow the camellias? No, unfortunately, I have a
lot of camellias growing, and I got I was so worried.
Do you get your camelias from Nuccio's in Pasadena?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
I have, but mostly our market is pulling them from
growers some North Carolina and Georgia.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Really, oh oh, those are the outside ones that Okay,
the perennial is I love camelias and I didn't know
that this is what happens to them in muck. Now
that I have all this muck, maybe I'll try some
of your details.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Well, I think I wanted to go to the primordial,
you know, and I wanted to connect these things that
are so of this moment and fleeting with something kind
of forever and ancient and that type kind of cycle
of life and death, and have that be like instantly
clear that that's what you were entering when you photo
grabbed your book. Some of the images are from various
(04:03):
fashion shows, so there's a range of photographers and an
archived work. But I have an amazing photographer, Julianne Nash,
who works on my team. So a lot of the
original work that was made for this book was made
together with her.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Well, I loved reading who is Nancy Haas? I think
I know her.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, she writes for the Time, so quite a bit
a lot of design writing.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Okay, she's so great. Yeah, and her forward is or
her introduction is really spot on. I think about your work,
And she said, for all the cacophony of Thompson's metier,
there's one thing that she doesn't have, however, time, and
that's what distinguishes her art from most other sorts of
sculpture that has to be executed very very fast, because
(04:44):
your plant material is so fragile. Yes, and you collect
it and then you put it out for a fashion
show or for an art exhibit or for a bar.
My favorite, my favorite favorite arrangement is that beautiful frothy
I think you called it not for of, you called
it missed of. Yes, that is my favorite thing.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
It is a magical material.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Oh my gosh, I grow a lot OFAs. I now
have every color of China's growing and it is just
one of my favorite. Oh there it is.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
It's so hard to find some of the more unusual
colors nowadays, and the and they have that where they
really flower like abundantly one year and then the next
year it's all leafed out. So we we some years
have just this paucity with no pink, no green, and
you just end up with this flat burgundy. Not my favorite,
but still I.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Have the churchreuse green, and I have the burgundy, but
I have the rose colored. I have all the colors
and pale pale pink. But in Maine, because my house
is so big up there and I have huge containers,
I go around the island around Mountainserve Island, and there's
lots oftina's growing there, really and I and I knock
(05:58):
on a door if they have a beautiful tree out
and I said, can I trade you something for your cotinas?
Oftentimes they'll say yes' because I'll do the pruning. I'll
prune their bushet. It'll be nicer next year. But you
must do that too, Yes, I mean you see something
somewhere that you have to have, you knock on the door.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yes, we do.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
We do.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
There's a lot of that kind of personal relationships that
end up getting you to a place with much more
special materials. If you're not that kind of florist or artist,
you're not going to make anything. You're never going to
get the treasures. And so it's these like fifteen years
of cultivating these amazing guys in the market for one thing,
which is a huge resource to New York Flower.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
And they appreciate your craziness, don't they.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Absolutely it entertains them.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, do they call you and say I have something?
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Every once in a while I get the call. And
I've also I've struggled too, because the branch guys, they
really need everything to fit in the truck, and I'm
always like, can I have the contorted, wind swept ancient thing?
And they say, well, first of all that's expensive, and
second of all, you're ruining my load in my truck,
so you're gonna have to pay for like half that
truckload for the one stupid branch you want. So anyway,
(07:06):
it's a struggle, but it's a very joyous chase.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Are you trying to express in your creations?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
I mean, I think for me, the muse is always
the materials, So to drive people to see these treasures
the way I see them, just to find that kind
of extraordinary, exquisite, infinite experience of nature. So that's the
general general thing, because as we all know, this is
the destruction of planet human existence. So there's that always there,
(07:37):
floating around in there and then but I also think
there's something where I want people to understand them as
living things. So whenever we design, we want things to
have movement, contortion, having them talking to themselves, not to
us much less about you know, a big display only
for human eyes. It's sort of like a plant world
unto itself.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
So your book is divided into sections, thickets, cascades, heaps, vapor,
birds and beasts, gusts and gales. What connects and differentiates
all these different segments.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Well, I think that as we were developing the book,
that these are some themes that really run through a
lot of work, and a lot of times these themes
are combined, so I think a lot of them connect easily.
You'll see one heap that also dissipates into mist. And
I think that they all kind of describe materials on
mass and how they change, how they lie on the ground,
(08:31):
how they lift up from the ground. And I think
those themes are always present somehow.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So you look at this book and in the luckily
in the back of the book a couple pages of
small photographs identifying the plant material in each of the
large photos, which is good because because I had no
idea that that would look like that.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
But yeah, I felt like it was kind of unfair
to not share the material names.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
No, I love that you did. But every chapter is
named thickets or missed or I love, I love all
of this, and you just is that white pine.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
It's white pine. And some of these heirloom chrysanthemums that
have I think the I don't know what amount of
pressure I have been putting on all the growers that
I ever connect with. But the chrysanthemums are having a
real renaissance right now, and it's just such an exquisite
flower that for us. The football ones that I'm sure
(09:25):
you think you know, remembering like prom in all decades,
they're banned from import.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
I know you can't get them to grow them.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I did get contraband one.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
You have to do tissue culture and you have to
grow them. And where are those from?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
This is the cred Light Farm, which is a Catskills farm.
They're really fantastic growers. I mean you'll find that in
my way into the materials and into our compositions is
often like a repetition, just a repetition finding a way
to jump from like one color into the same color
in another form, or the same form in another color.
So there's a lot of that kind of pairing.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Well, you started as a sculptor before you began your
work in flowers, which in your book you use the
word florist tree a lot. I had never used that
word florest tree. So is that the art of working
with flowers? Yeah, it's like I think it's kind of
like forest.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Try right.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
So it's in the dictionary florest tree, I hope. So,
I don't know. I haven't looked it up, but it's
I've never used that word before, and I thought, I
think it's such a nice descriptive word for flower people. Yeah,
and don't expect to get a tight little bouquet of
white roses from our guests. You're going to get she
(10:39):
brought me something very beautiful today. I'll put it in
front of the camera. So this is mimosa and poppies.
That's the poppy pods. These are the leaves of the mimosa,
which are so beautiful. I love how that looks. It's
so so fabulous. But that's that's like a formal flower
arrangement for you.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, sure, a gift, but something that just is screaming
of what's best of the season. Church.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I know it goes with my sweater.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I'm so happy in furry like this.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
It's so perfect. I love it. So let's talk about
the New York City flower market. What's your typical routine.
This is on twenty eighth Street between seventh and sixth
(11:31):
and a little bit over towards Fifth and Broadway, right, Yeah,
and I've been going there for many, many, many years.
It does change. There seem to be fewer shops now
than there used to be, but it's still very fascinating.
It is.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
If anybody go, Yes, everyone is welcome, and you can
you can probably get something with cash if you're aggressive enough.
You have to tolerate being ignored and climb over all
the various florists who don't want you there. Yeah, but no,
everybody's welcome. It's a bunch of wholesalers whose doors are
open to the public.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
This is where the florists of New York City and
the surrounding areas get their flowers. Yes, they're flown in
from all over the world.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
But also one of the things that's really spectacular and
special about our market is that some of our branch
suppliers have farms all up and down the Eastern Seaboard,
so we can follow the earliest forced branches that they
cut in December of the quints.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
They're like down at North Carolina exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
They cut their quints after it's had maybe two frosts
and their buds are started to develop, so then they
force that in barns. But as the season warms, they
follow the branches from south to north, all the way
up into Canada, and the scale of those materials is
really enormous. So for florists like me who want everything
to be massive, then that's an enormous tool and also
(12:55):
of a local, seasonal exquisite quality. So that's really not
common in flower markets over the world.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Sometimes maybe in San Francisco I saw stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
They have some good stuff, but not as much, not
as much, and they don't have the cold winters, so
they don't get the.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Great high dranges I remember in San Francisco. But New
York is it's so and it's so I love all
the people who work there too. But a Foliage Garden
is one that I love, and I love fantastic and
I used to get my beautiful gates there, the folding
gates which are like accordion gates made out of willow.
(13:32):
And you can also buy plants there, which I do.
I when I when I'm looking for something weird, I'll
go and look there for a weird orchid. Oh, they
have fabulous succulents.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Yeah, and you mentioned Foliage Garden. She has these incredible
greenhouses where she grows plants to oversize, so we get
to see all these incredible tropicals, and she's an incredible
eye the people too. It's a huge resource for us
because when we have to make something crazy, we have
this huge teams of people with all kinds of weird
skills that can come and join us, so we don't
(14:05):
have to figure it all out ourselves. For example, we
built these Frankenstein trees for a project. I needed to
get twenty four to thirty foot trees and you can't
do that, I mean you can't. We couldn't have four five.
They needed to look live and I'm not going to
work with fake materials ever. So what we figured out
(14:26):
to do was to get a trunk, a pine trunk.
We wanted pine trees, a pine forest, impossible to do.
We got a giant trunk, bolted it to a platform,
and then we stuck a sapling on top, so the
silhouettes were all of the proper heights and then we
could easily mask them. And the whole crew from Major
Wholesale helped me build them. So I had just these
(14:49):
guys who were the same guys who cut the trees
being the ones who bolted to them to the platform,
and they really know these trees and how to cull
them from the wild so that they're not damaging the
environment there. They're really knowledgeable, so it's pretty incredible.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Oh, you should come up. We're cutting down about a
ten acre parcel right now because we've had the ash disease.
So we have monster ash trees lying on the ground.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Now.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
My guys are My guys are cutting them to the ground,
and then we're going to do our grinding thing and
we grind into composts and we mix it with the
horse manure and the donkey manure and the chicken manure,
and in three years we have black gold best soil.
But it's hard to keep up with the dying trees.
We now have a beach problem. Beach trees. You're gonna
(15:36):
have some really beautiful skeleton beach trees, you know that.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yes, I mean that's so awful, But you're going to
find a way.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
You're going to have to use some of those in
some of your decks.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
A friend of mine is cutting down his larch and
larch we got asked to do a project at Chelsea
flower shows, so his dead larch is somehow going to
find its way the Chelsea.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Over to England.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, he's there, So it's going to come from not
too far away. And there's this memory I have of
a constant Spry arrangement. She's this very famous early twentieth century.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
She is our model arranger, and you mentioned her a
lot in the book.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
And she's extraordinarily creative. The work that she did was
so groundbreaking, but each material she would select and use
in its own way, and I think that's one of
the ways I really follow her. But the larch stuck
in my mind?
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Is that going to be? Is that going to be
one of your like the focal point of your.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
I don't don't know yet, but I can't help but
want it to be.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
So when do you start setting up Chelsea?
Speaker 2 (16:40):
That's in May and we have a very quick turnaround,
and of course I'm a stranger to that landscape, and
I have to really, I have to really do a
lot of preliminary Yeah, what.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Is your goal there? They ask you to do.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
There are a few florists who are doing like just
a display. It's not for judging. It's not as vast
does the garden displays. But there are going to be
three of us, a couple of other really interesting florists
and I not finalized, so I can't say any names,
but they were each going to make something in this
one marquee that should be very strange and interesting. Each
(17:15):
of us has a very different approach and none of
us are traditional by any means, so it should be cool.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Look at this project. There's one picture here, what was that?
Speaker 2 (17:23):
That was an Ula Johnson that was at the Brooklyn Museum.
That was her fashion show for We did it in fall.
You can see it's all full of for samples.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Rys anthems lying just the flowers lying on the floor
in many, many, many colors. Yeah, the models walked in
between all these things. They're not in water or anything,
so that is again ephemeral, but it's so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
The best part of this was the thing we had
to kind of do at the last minute. It's not
featured in these you can see them a little bit.
Is these queen limes inias? Yeah, those are the thing
that are the two tones, so they take you can
jump from one color to another and they give you
this transitional, exquisite kind of color. We also had these
incredible carnations in here that are like the color of
(18:05):
a bruise and they're so.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
So it's not just chrysanthemums, it's also it's a.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Lot of stuff. There's a lot of coxcomb. It felt
really coral like, but also we're really trying to mimic
the kind of growth of light.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Alosha and coxcomb. I hated years ago, and now I love.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
I've really come around.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
So I went to Europe and I got brought home
a whole lot of different seeds because mixed with other things,
it looks so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Their colors are like nothing. Yeah, those oranges and peaches,
and then the acidy greens and the black black. Yeah,
their exquisite.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
You get many ideas out of this book. So when
you create work for fashion shows such as Jason Wu
who's very avant garde and Ula Johnson, which comes first?
Does the fashion inspire the project? Do you get to
see the fashion first or do they tell you what
they want?
Speaker 2 (18:54):
There's a lot of back and forth. A lot of
the time, there's kind of a somebody who's been developing
some kind of vague mood boardy kind of plan, a
creative director, show designer, and then we come in and
we try to push them to our whims and to
some great successes and sometimes we follow more where they
(19:15):
need us to go. It really depends on the client
and the and the moment.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
So when you go to India to do a job,
how many people go with you?
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Well, I went a number of times in the planning
and preparing and researching. It was a really incredible client
who wanted to really wanted to show her community of
you know, people who throw lavish weddings a really different way.
So one of the biggest challenges is that we chose
to source the flowers in India, which flowers in India
are grown for a lot of purposes and huge quantities,
(19:45):
but they're not grown for the purposes of weddings and events.
So often their quality isn't a purpose.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Mostly chrysanthemums and colndulism.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
A lot of roses actually, but the for the fragrance
and just for the heads, and people don't cut the
flowers with long stems. They're used for the heads and
strong or so. Sourcing was extremely difficult. The supply chain
just isn't there for the things that we were looking for.
Plants come on a truck, but the truck it takes
three weeks. While the truck the plants sit by in
(20:15):
a dark truck in what kind of circumstances, and also
planted in clay, so every plant that you think is
five pounds is thirty pounds. So their challenges were so unknowable,
and the surprises and the confusion was so vast. But
it was such an exquisite project.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
How many people came to the wedding? How many guess?
Speaker 2 (20:36):
I think? Oh, I think they had about eight hundred.
It was amazing because we were basically making like six
fashion shows at once of totally different character and different
parts of the experience. Any of those in the books,
they're not in the book. You can see a few
of them on either our Instagram or our website. People
walked through a tunnel that we entirely created. That was
(20:57):
a forest, like a psychedelic forest that had been the driveway.
And we built these trees out of a vine called
Giloy vine that's like used in Iurvedic medicine and Ashoka trees,
exquisite trees. But it turns out it's illegal to prune.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Anything oh in India.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Oh really, or even on your own domemestic property. You
have to be extremely strategic and careful and knowledgeable about
how to do that?
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Wow, Well, yeah, you got it.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
I got it, I got it. I've always find a way.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
What are your favorite plants to use in your work?
Speaker 2 (21:33):
You'll see a lot of them over and over again
in the book. But I think I go for things
with really dramatic sculptural form. We were talking about this
Calanchoe leaves that I come to again and again. They
have exquisite curves and leaf forms that to me, they
come right off of a classical ornament, and so they're
instantly evoking something kind of formal, and I think that's
(21:55):
incredibly interesting.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
And they're also easy to use, absolutely because you're just
break them off the break them off the branch. They
break a snap. I love them.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
We use them over and over too. Yeah, we don't
get to recycle a lot of our flowers. Usually it's
just the compost pit.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
The book's quite large. It has how many pages? Two
hundred and fifty pages about and page after page after
page of amazing ideas and amazing material choices. So what
big jobs do you have coming up? Talk about any
of them?
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Well, we are doing a couple of things for fashion Week.
Not massive, but interesting, I think, and it's kind of
like I keep all of these pet ideas in my
pocket and I wait for the right unsuspecting client and
then then we have these kind of crazy plans that
nobody's ever seen. So we're going to be doing a
couple of those things this coming February.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
It's coming up. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
We just came off of a crazy year where we
did a wedding in India and then among many other projects,
then we were invited to be part of this public
art festival, this Flower Public Art Festival Cordova, Spain, and
it's about the seventh year I believe that we participated
and their five people were invited and we were asked
(23:08):
to design at the courtyard of the Great Mosque of Cordeva,
which I guess one of the most beautiful white Earth.
And we chose to do these designs on the facade
because it's very austere and massive monolithic facade. When the
mosque was first built, they were open windows, these alcoves,
and they bricked up these alcoves as the mosque transformed
(23:32):
eventually into a cathedral, and it created this just like wall,
this kind of imposing and completely without ornament wall. So
we kind of used our designs to create these windows
back into it. And it was one of my favorite
projects I've ever done. And the one thing that was
really exciting about it is that it was basically a
(23:53):
public art piece. So the five thousand people that were
already going to the mosque every single day were passed
seeing our work and interacting with our work and having
this experience of it. And that's extremely rare. In florestry.
We work in a private world of mainly luxury. It's
all invite only any ephemeral, ephemeral, yeah, and so it's
(24:15):
really only kept in photographs. And then in this very
rare situation where we were on display for about five days,
what's that? That is a Dutchman's pipe?
Speaker 1 (24:24):
See I have that growing and main it's so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
They're so stinky, Yeah, they are that.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
They are so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I think that that combination of something painful and something
exquisite is often paired in my interests, the sort of
repulsion and I think a lot of obviously there's always seduction,
there's always seduction in designing with flowers, but to have
that pushing back a little bit, a little bit of fear,
some snakes.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Something you see a container rarely things are mounded on
the ground. There are containers holed holding these things, but
they seem to be almost floating, many of them, which
are so beautiful. For Scythia another common common shrub, but
you use it so beautifully.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
It's a much loathed I think, uh plant because we
are desperate for something and it's the first thing, so
we take what we can get. But the wonderful thing
about Forcythia is it's so flexible, and so you can
create these kind of wonderful whips and you can really
change like a willow. Yeah that's also has willow, but
for Cythia also has beautiful leaves in the fall. So
as a straw, it's quite elegant.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
I just planted a whole row. Somebody gave me some
mature for Ccythia bushes. I just planted a whole, big,
long row of it, because why not. Yeah, you know,
there's there's I have so much space. It's nice to
have that. And then I was thinking, I guess I
was thinking, like Emily Tompson, maybe I'll do something with it.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
So your challenges are great. You have you do have
to have a big truck or a couple of trucks
right for all this stuff, and then do you have
to take do you have to disassemble everything the minute
job is over?
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Usually yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
But you know a lot of people think that's such
a painful thing about this job, but I disagree entirely,
because we just get to build it all over again,
and all of our work this ephemerality, like we don't
have to keep living with it. You can make something
and then you walk away, and that there's something really
freeing and I think psychologically powerful about that experience is
that it's this creation, creation, creation, and then it's all
(26:35):
just falls into a heap of compost and rebuilds.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Yeah, how do you live with plant material in your
own house?
Speaker 2 (26:43):
I am a collector, are It's true? And I have
a very very new garden that is incredibly exciting. Where's
that Just a little brownstone in crownd Heights, Brooklyn?
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Oh really? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
So we have a little tiny garden and I'm bringing
in a tree. I'm trying to get the biggest tree
I can get, get it root, prune so I can
fit it through the door. And there's insane amount of
bulbs that I endlessly go crazy for. And then the
rest is sort of just experiments.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
In Bedford, all the road sides are very messy. I
don't know have you been driven around Bedford ever. I
have about a mile of road frontage onto two roads.
And this year I decided I'm clearing. I don't want
any I don't want any thickets. I called a supplier,
a bulb supplier that I use all the time, and
at the end, like this is in January cold, and
(27:28):
I said, do you have any leftover bulbs because nobody's
going to be planting with this zero temperatures. And I
got to think about eighty thousand small bulbs. So now
I am crocus or what everything crocus and china doxia
and or enthologums and a muscaris of all colors, and
so I am going to plant. I'm going to shame
the neighbors and the neighborhood into fixing up their roadside.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Like a piece of public art.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
It is, it is, so I can't wait. We're doing
it next week. The gift I only thought of that
brider to your book, really, yeah, because I know, really
you're so inspirational with all these massive, massive projects that
you're doing amongst your contemporaries in the floral design world.
Who are the people that you collaborate with or draw
inspiration from.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
One thing that's happened that's kind of extraordinary is that
so many of the people that have come through my
door and trained with me have gone on to open
their own businesses, and some of them are doing just
such amazing work. And they are just like my children,
my nieces. They're not a lot of nephews, but mostly nieces.
So that's one of the really wonderful things about this community,
(28:32):
because we're really trying to push a different way, a
seasonal really an eye towards the seasonal, pushing away from
any flower at any time, a very kind of idiosyncratic
design sensibility, and so those There's a woman a couple
in California, Wren McDonald de Blasia renco Is her company
that's like crazy psychedelic Hawaiian and Sophia Marino Bungey of
(28:54):
issa Issa. She's amazing, does really exquisite, kind of wild
and understated. There's some friends in London, Wagner Kreutsch. Do
you know this guy?
Speaker 1 (29:05):
I've seen He's.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
A great friend. He came to India with us and
he's really quite an artist. And there's other friends in Singapore.
It's starting to be a whole web of us.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Oh, here's one of my favorite rooms of pool room
at the Four Seasons. I remember when you did all
these when they first started after Carbone took over. Right, Wow, that.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Was one of my favorite projects. Oh, I bet we
really developed all these designs over time as they as
they opened. They reopened the old Four Seasons and everything's landmarked.
It's the only landmarked interiors in New York, and so
there's only so many things they can change. And the
flowers are the thing. But we did build this thing
in the pool for a long period of time. I
don't know if you ever got to see which we
(29:48):
did that, but I always thought it was like Philip
Johnson's soul escaping his body. It was this misty contortion,
this like kind of vortex of vines and branches in blossom,
very loose an airy, and but it was like a
little tornado in the middle.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Of the room. There's a photo in the book of
a bunch of ladders, old wooden painters ladders and then vines.
Is that what kind of vine is? Vine? And wasps
nests Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
This was a fashion show for an accessories company called
brother Belly's. My friend Aura helped conceive this and they
released butterflies into the design. Oh my gosh, you can
see them in.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
So what are the tools that you use that you
have in your bag?
Speaker 2 (30:35):
At is my ars? Clippers? I just love those they
are They're so good for cutting branches actually for a
small tool. I have secatary secuataries, I have knives, I
have wirecutters, I have but for the most part, florest
tools are what they can wear on their belt. We
work with like spit and vinegar.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
It's It's one of the things I love about this
work is it's so weirdly creative in the problem solving realm.
You have to fix crazy problems with nothing. You have
a piece of tape and you have to solve the
whole of thing falling over before the guest arrives and
under ridiculous time circumstances and off and out in the
field somewhere. That kind of we can do it quality
(31:18):
is something I love about this work, and also the
relationship between that and the kind of quote unquote humble
understanding of this as a domestic art we work in
this crazy way with massive installations, but as an art
that I think, until very recently was considered really chopped liver,
you know, not something that was of an elevated status,
(31:40):
something with low pay.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
I don't know. I've been watching the evolution of floral
design for a long long time in New York, and
you really did change it. I mean you changed a
lot and made it, I think more interesting, because it's
great if you can use a million flowers, you know,
spend it on strings from the ceiling and you know,
(32:03):
and but it's different. You'rs is different. And I love
the incorporation of trees and branches and weeds and all
kinds of material that you would never ever expect to
see indoors any place.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Well, I think I wanted to feel real. Some part
of this fantasy that we make is still always, always,
at least almost all of it is real. We don't
work with artifice. The artifice isn't all in the transformation
of the context and like bring it into a weird place.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
So there's there's a place in la that I go
to every time I tropics ink you go to the tropics.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Yeah, amazing, as you loved it.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
There. Ryan, He's one of my favorite Ryans in the
whole world. Do you get stuff from him?
Speaker 2 (32:45):
I mean, it's too difficult to get it here from
there and those crazy baobab looking things, but they've really
set a tone. People are really paying attention. I'm so
thrilled because it's like people are understanding this kind of
Jurassic esthetic, getting away from really boring commercial stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Yeah, but he's He taught me how to take care
of my staghorns because I inherited some really amazing staghorns
that are like a hundred years old, so I have
to learn how. He says, throw a banana in for
it to eat.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Really, Yeah, do you have to hose them off every day?
Speaker 1 (33:20):
And no, every day I water my staghorns because they
like they like water.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, it's not a good interior plant, no, for just exactly.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
And I have giant hanging ones now that I started myself,
and I hang them outside in the summer. But I
finally found a place in a greenhouse where I could
hang them.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
There's a grower in Hawaii that I actually visited once.
He was quite a character. He had wild boars that
he was actually penned. He'd rescued them as babies, and
when we got there they got out. Oh my god,
I swear I had nothing to do.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
What were they eating?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Everything? They everything? He had the most, This absolute cacophony
of a greenhouse with just incredible treasure is just buried
in it, but wild because it's just him taking care
of everything. She had a xanadu philodendron that was acid green,
that is so rare. And he sends me the cut
leaves for a fortune, like seven dollars a leave.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Have you been at the Amazon spheres in Seattle?
Speaker 2 (34:13):
No, Oh, you have to go there.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Oh, don't forget to go there because they also have
amazing greenhouses with very rare plants. And you would not
think Amazon would have such a place, but they do
very rare, exciting things, and their walls of plants are
very beautiful. They're living walls.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
I have to go.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yeah, very extraordinary. Well, it's so much fun to talk
to you. I want to I want to see everything
you do. Tell me when you're doing something in New
York that I can to come and take a peek at.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Fantastic.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Please come visit with us again, and good luck in Chelsea.
I can't wait to see that and all the other
things that Emily Thompson creates for herself and for her clients.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Thank you so much, and thank you for everything you've
done to lay the groundwork for what I do, because
it's it's been very part to me.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Oh I'm nice.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
You can follow her at Emily Thompson Flowers. Thank you
so much.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
And Emily's new book is available now for pre order
on www dot fiden dot com that's p h A
I D O N and on April ninth, wherever books
are sold.
Host
Martha Stewart
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