Time Machine du Jour: A 1960s London Flower Taxi

It can’t be often that you come across a charming little business lost in the archives and think – wow, that’s a really innovative idea! Time travel with us back to a 1960s London when a young couple decided to sell flowers from the back of a taxi… This got me thinking about the classic…

Step inside an Ali Baba’s Cave of Dried Flowers

Somewhere in between Paris and Provence in the small town of Bayet, a floral wonderland awaits. For 35 years, husband and wife team Véronique and Jean-François have been harvesting, drying and selling over fifty varieties of flower on their 7000m² farm in the countryside of Auvergne. And you’re invited to stop in anytime and frolic…

A Brief Compendium of Crazy Kitsch Lighting

The Southern Belle. The Moon Beam. The Serenade. We’re not spitting romance novel titles, honey – we’re talking lamps. Kitschy, retro lamps. Lamps with names worthy of their painstakingly groovy macramé. Novelty TV lights in the shape of an elephant. Lamps made of yesteryear’s synthetics (ex. lucite, fiber glass, popcorn acrylic) and design gimmicks that…

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New York Spring Guide 2020

After a long and frosty winter, Springtime rolls around to pull New Yorkers out of hibernation and into the sun – which won’t stop from shining, no matter what news headlines arrive. But as we gear up to enjoy the unfurling al fresco cafes and new exhibits, New Yorkers are being asked to work together,…

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How the Last Great American Flower Factory Still Blooms Over Midtown, NYC

Once upon a time, a woman needed a parrot tulip. Not just any tulip. “She started with something like this,” explains Adam Brand, heir to his family’s 4th generation flower factory business, M&S Schmalberg. He picks up a few flat, flower shaped layers of fabric. “Then we took some little poofs, some hibiscus, all different…

The Village Invaded by Flowers

The small Polish village of Zalipie might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but to me, it has the cobalt-blues of Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul, the charm of European gypsy folklore and the hopeful promise of Spring… After the atrocities of World War II, the Polish people were in need of hope. In the years that followed,…

Helping Nature Re-decorate the Abandoned Homes of Detroit

Nature is always happy to take over the places we’ve discarded. She’s the first one to reclaim it, curling up around old drainpipes, making herself comfortable in between the cracks and decorating crumbling brick with her own wild wallpaper. In Detroit, a city where vast urban abandonment has been part of the landscape for decades now, a group of…