A European Exploration

Featuring: Isabel Gilbert Palmer; Bruce Wright; WEndy Andrade NDSF, ICSF; Nancy Kitchen AIFD; Ania Norwood; Anthony J. Vigliotta AIFD

A team of AIFD Designers inspired by European styles and trends built an exhibition demonstrating the similarities and peculiarites that respective designers experience. They explained techniques from each individual point of view and explore their own separate European design influences.

 

(Program underwritten through a grant from Edito Floris and Flowers & magazine.)

 

Inspired by European Floral Design Style

This program begins with a bundle of questions--which multiply further depending on one's curiosity and interest in the concept.

What does "European style" mean, anyway? Where does one begin this journey into the world of European floral design in search of a style definition or statement. Who decides the definition of European style and how?

Where and how does one find out about it? If you decide to take magazine subscriptions or buy books, which ones? On whose advice? If you take workshops, which ones, with which tutors? Do you search the Internet, find blogs, grab for anything with the swing tag "Europe?"

Can one country or another be considered the home and seat of European floral design? Considering the important influence of Dutch design, including the fine tradition of Dutch hand tied bouquets, you might be forgiven for thinking it all begins in The Netherlands, and look for the latest contemporary influence to young Dutch designers like Max van de Sluis.

You may also think of Germany, remembering the enormous impact of Gergor Lersch on modern-day European floristry. You may have attended the AIFD Foundation workshop in 2007, where Gregor Lersch's compatriot florist Wally Klett taught deliciously decorative and sumptuous designs. Or did European style begin in Germany way back in the 1980s, when Paul Wegner created the first parallel bouquet before a community of teachers as a sort of experimental joke?

With a glimpse at their cultural histories, floral traditions, geography and contemporary approaches insofar as this introduction allows, in both countries we will begin to recognize the origins and backgrounds and characteristics of their own particular styles.