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