The Flower Workshop: Lessons in Arranging Blooms, Branches, Fruits, and Foraged Materials

by Ariella Chezar, Julie Michaels

Overview

Written by a celebrated floral designer and lavishly illustrated with full-color photography, this book provides step-by-step instructions for more than 45 stunning floral projects from simple to spectacular and equips you with the skills to customize arrangements at home.

Whether hosting a party, helping out with a friend's wedding, or wishing to incorporate the beauty of flowers into everyday life, The Flower Workshop allows you to create dazzling arrangements that go beyond merely pretty and into realms of the dramatic, the unexpected, and sometimes even the magical.

Known for her hands-on flower workshops at FlowerSchool New York, Ariella Chezar walks you through the nuts and bolts of creating a variety of small flourishes, tonal arrangements, branch arrangements, handheld bouquets, wreaths, garlands, grand gestures, and more—all accompanied by detailed photography. Chezar offers advice and philosophy on everything from texture and color to foliage and containers, providing an overall approach to living and working with flowers, with an eye toward fresh, local, wild, seasonally influenced floral design.

For every occasion, from relaxed and simple to lavish and monumental, The Flower Workshop celebrates the special moments in your life with glorious, fragrant floral arrangements and enhances your surroundings with abundant beauty.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781607747659
Publisher:	Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Publication date:	03/01/2016
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	241,381
Product dimensions:	7.60(w) x 9.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

ARIELLA CHEZAR is the author of Flowers for the Table and a master floral designer whose work has graced the covers and pages of Martha Stewart Living, O Magazine, Smitten, Sunset, Garden Design, Better Homes and Gardens, Domino, Real Simple, Sweet Paul, and many more. She is a teacher at FlowerSchool New York and has designed flower arrangements for the White House. Read more about her work at www.ariellaflowers.com.

JULIE MICHAELS is a former editor for the Boston Globe and has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and numerous magazines.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Flower Workshop"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Ariella Chezar.
Excerpted by permission of Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction 1
The Art of Painterly Arrangements  11
Essential Techniques and Tools  33
Living With Flowers  49
• 
Tonal Arrangements  59
Favorite Flowers  85
Branch Arrangements  113
 Fruits and Berries  133
Handheld Bouquets  151
Compotes  173
celebrating with flowers  197
• 
Seasonal Flower guide  231
About the Authors  235
Acknowledgments  236
Index  240

Editorial Reviews

Chezar, whose creations have an easy sweetness, is an accomplished designer who can count the White House as a client.

The New York Times Book Review - Dominique Browning

12/21/2015
To teach the basics of flower-arranging, Cezar (Flowers for the Table) developed a fine workshop, which she duly brings to print with help from former Boston Globe editor Michaels. This handbook offers practical guidelines alongside eye-pleasing color photographs. The lessons, beginning with color, promote Cezar’s “lush, painterly style”; she uses “unusual” flowers, in season, with the goal of intensifying nature. For 45 arrangements, she outlines an appropriate season, tools such as anchors and rubber bands, ingredient flowers (along with alternatives), and clear directions. In great detail, she instructs the reader on how to arrange bouquet sizes fit for banquet and altar tables, teensy tussie-mussies of lilies of the valley, nosegays, garlands, and one square wreath with fruit. She alludes to painters such as Sargent, quotes poets such as Frost, adds fun facts (carnations come in 200 shades), and prettifies the text with metaphors (petals like “petticoats aflutter”). This essential flower-arranging guide has everything but thumb indexes. Color photos. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Bring a bit of beauty into your home with stunning floral arrangements….these desirable yet both simple and complex projects are paired with stunning photography. Chezar’s loose, natural arrangements are fabulous and sure to be popular. A must for flower lovers.”
—Library Journal  (Starred Review)

"Offers practical guidelines alongside eye-pleasing color photographs....[An] essential flower-arranging guide."
—Publishers Weekly

"Ariella Chezar is a true floral icon. In The Flower Workshop, we are inspired by her love of nature and her respect for the inherent beauty of botanicals in every season. Ariella generously teaches the craft of floristry and its essential techniques, and she shows students of this book that floral arranging is a means of personal and artistic expression."
—Debra Prinzing, author of Slow Flowers and The 50 Mile Bouquet

"These days it’s very fashionable for floral designers to grow their own blooms, forage for material, and create arrangements in a loose, organic style. But Ariella has been a master of this style for decades. An innovator rather than a follower, Ariella always creates floral designs that surprise and delight."
—Kate Berry, creative director of Martha Stewart Weddings and editor-at-large of Martha Stewart Living

"Ariella has developed a new vocabulary of floral design, one based almost entirely on the natural gesture of a plant and the way it grows in the garden. She’s inspired me (and a whole school of floral design) to avoid rigid perfection, and to rely more on cultivating an artist’s intimate eye on the world of flowers."
—Stephen Orr, author of The New American Herbal

"I am constantly inspired by the beauty of Ariella’s organic, creative, and thoughtful designs. Her arrangements have a sense of elegance and a natural aesthetic. Ariella’s touch is subtle, yet always innovative, and the artistry of her work is stunning without fail."
—Darcy Miller, editorial director of Martha Stewart Weddings

"I recommend The Flower Workshop...Chezar, whose creations have an easy sweetness, is an accomplished designer who can count the White House as a client. She likes to work, she says, quoting the poet Mary Oliver, until 'I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.' Surely that's reason enough to go snipping."
—New York Times

From the Publisher

★ 02/15/2016
Bring a bit of beauty into your home with stunning floral arrangements. Designer Chezar (Flowers for the Table), and writer and editor Michaels introduce Chezar's "painterly" style. Included is advice on how to shop for flowers or forage from nature, choice of containers, lists of tools, and additional materials needed. Stylistic elements are illustrated, such as applying color themes, creative use of materials, or highlighting a particular focal point. Instruction continues via arrangement projects, which showcase color designs, featured flowers, branch and nonfloral, bouquets, compotes, and flowers for specific celebrations. Alethea Harampolis and Jill Rizzo's The Flower Recipe Book has more illustrated step-by-step directions for the beginner. VERDICT These desirable yet both simple and complex projects are paired with stunning photography. Chezar's loose, natural arrangements are fabulous and sure to be popular. A must for flower lovers.

Library Journal