If flower photos can be called eye candy, then the images in Ariella Chezar’s The Flower Workshop are among the richest, most delicious and utterly decadent chocolates you can imagine.
Ariella Chezar’s breakout book, Flowers for the Table has been a source of inspiration for me for years. This book will take its place alongside the short stack of books I regularly flip through for inspiration. Ariella’s greatest gift is her ability to brilliantly combine cultivated flowers and foraged elements from nature and then creatively reinterpret them. The result is always immensely interesting, often unexpected, yet always “retaining the allure of the wild,” as she explains.
A master of ephemeral artwork, Ariella’s lush designs and complex color palettes evoke the subtle, layered brushstrokes of watercolor paintings. Throughout the book she describes her approach to creating these “painterly” arrangements. It is Ariella’s exquisite approach to color that distinguishes her work from any other designer, and has influenced my own designs tremendously since taking her workshop in 2013.
While often mistakenly compared to the designs of Dutch Masters, her work is distinct because of her use of subtle tonal contrasts within a single color, rather than the riot of colors often depicted in the historical paintings.
As she so aptly describes in the book, with too many colors, there’s “no place for the eye to rest.” Her ability to choose a base color and then “run the scales with it” is the stuff that keeps me up late at night re-configuring my own garden (again) to make room for the special fluttery filler and lush foliage that set her designs apart.
The book shares some of the basic tenements of Ariella teaching and emphasizes seasonal flowers and working with local flower farmers throughout the text, which warms my heart.
If I had any critiques, it would be the flower farmer nerd in me wanting to know every single species, variety or cultivar of flowers featured in each and every one of her designs. The flower selection highlighted in the pages is quite literally awe inspiring and I’m hungry to track down each and every gem.
After months of waiting with eager anticipation, I devoured this book in a few hours. It was such a luxury to sit and savor each and every one of Ariella’s featured designs and study all the beautiful images captured by photographer Erin Kunkel.
I ordered copies of the book for my team, plus a copy for one lucky Floret blog reader. GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED. Congratulations to Elizabeth Daniels for winning a copy of the book.
A few past posts you also might enjoy:
Farmer & the {Florist} Interview with Ariella Chezar
Ariella at Chalk Hill Clematis
Wedding flowers budget on
Nice blog! The great combination of color – it’s extraordinary! The flower workshop by ariella chezar is nice.