MY EXPERIENCE : LONDON FLOWER SCHOOL

One month after the wedding, I visited London for studymoon trip. If you are wondering why I call it studymoon, it is because my husband came along with me to London for honeymoon yet I spent most of the days there taking floral classes. So yes, I left my husband and his laptop in the hotel to do classes.

In LFS, I took The Foundation course. It was 10 of us in the class, such a fun and memorable experience to get to know friends from across the world with the same passion.

From this course I got to know another fellow Indonesian florist, Monica of Bibury Flowers. We were not in the same class though, since she was doing career course (I envy her :( )

Within a week, the students get to learn many arrangements from hand-tied, vase arrangements, centerpieces, Ikebana and large scale installation.

What I like about LFS is that you get to learn both classic and contemporary style, so you don’t have to learn and stuck with specific style only. This really helps their students to discover and figure out what personal style they prefer to do.

My funny-looking dome shape arrangement

As I am more into anything unstructured and natural-looking arrangement, I struggled a lot in creating dome shape arrangements.

I just don’t know how to create the perfect dome. I remember that I was the last student to finish this arrangement. I took the longest time to create yet it is still looking somewhat funny. You can see how it looks like on the next picture.

Meanwhile, vase arrangement class is my favourite. Ammi, grasses, peppers, asclepias, by looking at the ingredients I just know that I would enjoy arranging this one.

Image credits Marcelo Deguchi

Before I started this course, I wonder why there should be one day class dedicated just for Ikebana.  I remember we were only given pink chrysanthemums, agapanthus, and grasses.

I was like, “what should I do with these?”.

After further explanation about Ikebana by our tutor, Wagner, this class is such an eye-opener for me. With certain rules and limited ingredients, you need to be creative and thoughtful at placing your blooms. It is amazing to learn that with minimum ingredients you can create an impactful arrangement

On the last day, we worked on a large, well, more like ENORMOUS floral installation, the Flower Tornado. This installation was made with no floral foam, 100% chicken wire.

It was such an amazing experience to work on such huge installation with another 16 students.

FIVE MINUTES INTERVIEW WITH WAGNER KREUSCH

WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND AND HOW DID YOUR JOURNEY INTO THE FLORISTRY WORLD STARt?

My background is in graphic design. I have been interested in art for many years and originally wanted to become an architect. Architecture is very challenging though and can be very dry, so I decided to take a graphic design degree instead. I did this in Brazil where I am from and worked there as a graphic designer for 5 years before coming to the UK.

I didn’t actually work properly with flowers until I came to London, although my mum is a florist and had a flower business in the Brazil. The world of flowers seemed far too crazy for me when I was young, but now, I can’t imagine doing anything else.

do you have signature style?

This is a difficult question for me, because I don’t have a signature style personally - I like all styles of floristry. This made it very easy to create the school though, because we teach all styles within the school. This is very different from workshops where the florist running the workshop has a particular style and people attend it because of this.

Also, at LFS we try to vary floristry styles as much as possible. There are styles I am more connected with, but I am very open to being creative, so I try not to limit myself. I am however, more drawn to the message that is conveyed through the arrangement than the arrangement itself. I believe this comes from my background in Ikebana which I have been studying for 5 years.

What do you think of the use of floral foam?

There has been, quite rightly, a lot of discussion around the use of floral foam in the floristry industry. Since its invention in the US in the 1950’s it has become the primary mechanics for most floral arrangements, especially in weddings and events where time is short and profits are small. I personally believe though that the industry will move away from floral foam in the future. Not only, because of the evidence that will emerge related to its lack of biodegradability, but also more generally, because it restricts the natural nature of floral arrangements, and also limits creativity.

how do you see in the future of floristry?

I believe that the future of floristry lies in self-expression. A true artist in any field is never concerned about what others think about what they have created.  They have created, and that is what is important.

Florists; artists; creatives in general need to express themselves through their art without the restriction of trends. This should be and hopefully will be the future of floristry.

FIVE MINUTES INTERVIEW WITH AESME

Last month I signed up for two day class with AESME. I am so inspired by Alex And Jess, the founder of AESME. I have been a big fan of their work since last year and it was such a dream came true to be able to visit their studio, meet them and learn from them personally. After I finished my second day I asked them whether I could have a short interview with them, and they were happy to do it!

What is your background?

Alex: We have no background in floristry, we both had careers before floristry. I worked at events and fundraising for Oxford University, and Jess worked for an editorial office in Oxford, we tried lots of different things before. And then we came to floristry because it was a flower arranging hobby of mine, we want to run our own business and do something creative. So I did an internship in New York for a flower studio called Saipua. I wrote to the owner called Sarah asking for an internship and was not expecting her to say yes and asked me to come on the next spring.

Jess: I did not come along with Ally to New York because I was working at that time and it is kind of of Ally’s hobby at that stage so I was just interested in watching what she was doing.

Alex: I went to the the studio for two weeks and worked on couple of weddings and workshops.  She gave me some classes with her privately, was amazing and I was completely in love after that! Came back to London and went for coffee with Jess and I was like “This is what I want to do with my life, I finally found it!” and Jess was like “cool, let’s do it together!”.

How did you come up with the name ‘AESME’?

Alex: Esmé is the traditional French name that we like, it is the character in a couple of books that we really love and it is just a name that we always loved, but we wanted to create a name that was objective so it did not mean anything. We adapted the name Aesme by adding an “A” to the front, we want five letter words that look really beautiful in paper and sounding nice. So we basically made it up. So it is an adaptation of the name that we love.

Jess:   And it looks strong but it sounds soft. It took a while to come up with that.

Who is your biggest influence and where do you look for inspiration?

Alex: Probably Constance Spry, we love her books, we got lots of her books here and we use the same methods that she used with chicken wire & kenzan, not using foam also using containers that is basically like kitchen containers or the antique vessels that we used for jams or for pickles or some kind of foods, so we like to use those kind of old containers. We are also influenced by garden designers as well. There is a garden designer called Jinny Blom who creates really beautiful naturalistic gardens.

We also go visit gardens a lot around the country because there is so many beautiful heritage English gardens. We go and see what is growing, how plants grow together and we come back with lots of ideas of things that we want to grow in our gardens also ways of arranging them as well so they look really natural. That’s the big inspiration, gardens.

Jess: And then also things outside of flowers, floristry and garden such as fashion, clothes, architecture, food, and lots of different things.

How do you describe your style of arrangement?

Alex: Garden inspired. Because it really is. The ingredients all have all been cut from our garden throughout the growing season. So they are genuinely garden ingredients, but also we take inspiration from the garden where we cutting. So if we are doing a spring class, it will be very seasonal ingredients we will forage four blossom and particular types of foliage that look amazing in spring. So everything is very in tune with the setting, the weather and what is going on in the landscape.

So, garden inspired, naturalistic, seasonal, quite romantic and a little bit rambling. Because in gardens can thrive to look a certain way but nature will always take over again, so it will always go back to being wild and overgrown. So we want an element of that like it is not perfect, it is not straight, it is kind of wild and natural.

What do you see in the future of floristry industry?

Jess: I think now people started aware of where thing is coming from. There is greater demand and bigger market from home-grown produced, so small artisanal growers. In the same way that has been a revival in a small farm and buy biodynamic farm growing vegetables. There are lots of small growers and that has happened from the past 10 years and that is affecting market, because brides are seeing British flowers and naturalistic garden flowers and that’s what they are wanting and it is in tune with the fact that they are start thinking about where those things come from and the impact on environment that things are having.

So, the British flower styles not only garden style but also the sustainable practices, because floristry is incredibly unsustainable industry that uses huge amount of energy, water, chemicals. That is a pushback against that at the moment, like Phillipa Craddock who did the Royal Wedding and she did incredible archway and she did not use any floral foam, she just used water vessels and that is a really big flag in the industry to say we have going to stop using these things, because you are selling a natural product and you are talking about nature that is meant to be about the flowers and you are using things that is that is completely counterproductive to that. So it think it is going to be a big shift in sustainability and more mindful ways of sourcing flowers. And in relation to that, when it comes to design shape and form, just like food people are more flexible about things because they know if it is organic and you want it to be organic, you need to be more forgiving about the nature of materials.