Flower September/October 2022

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”—Albert Camus ONE OF MY DAUGHTERS ASKED ME THE OTHER DAY what my favorite season was. Without a moment’s hesitation I responded, “Fall.” She agreed, which made my heart smile. I like the reprieve of the season—or in the South, the promise of a reprieve—from the punishing summer heat. I like the fragrance of pumpkin spice and the taste of candy corn, and I like the return to routine. I also like the shift in nature’s palette. We move from blues and greens and pinks to rusts and umbers and bricks. These warmer colors begin to appear not only in my garden, but also in my Instagram feed. Fall feels like a gentler season, and it reflects my appreciation for…

In this fully revised edition of the 1988 Dorothy Draper biography, Carleton Varney delves even deeper into the life of the renowned designer and interior decorator. Varney, who has owned and directed Dorothy Draper & Company, Inc., for almost 60 years, has added updated text in every chapter of his original book, as well as a new foreword. This deluxe edition includes significant historical documents and photographs recently discovered from a private collection. Text is also based on interviews with Draper’s family and former staff, as well as Varney’s personal memories of working with the “Duchess of Decorating,” as Draper was often called. Credited as one of the early founders of the interior design industry, Draper is best known for her commercial projects, including The Greenbrier hotel in West Virginia,…

On a late April morning in upstate New York, the first delicate blooms are bursting through the soil. Overhead, cherry blossoms explode from the bud in clouds of cotton candy pink. Often this time of year feels like one step forward with a warm day, the return of the sun, and the first crocus to break the cold earth and then two steps back with a surprise spring snowstorm and the return of winter coats. But as I make my way to the cavernous Basilica Hudson, a restored 19th-century riverfront factory, it’s clear that spring is officially present thanks to a display of the season’s finest floral offerings, from blush anemones and coral peonies to towering bunches of sunny forsythia and dusky hellebores. The bloom’s varied colors, textures, and forms…

You formally trained as an artist at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and had a career as a painter before starting your textile company, Ferrick Mason, in 2008. How did you make the artistic leap from one medium to another? After I graduated from Pratt, my husband and I moved to New Zealand, where I continued to paint. But people there kept telling me that my work would translate well to textiles. So when we moved to Los Angeles three years later, I decided to go to school to learn the craft. I attended Otis College of Art and Design and learned pattern design and the famous William Morris method. At the time, there weren’t many boutique textile lines, but I was inspired by Lulu de Kwiatkowski and what she…

Little did Meg Black know that a simple cluster of coneflowers performing in a roadside pocket garden would change everything when it came to her paintings. Gardens were an early inspiration for her canvases. While studying art in her native Syracuse, New York, Meg became fascinated by the interplay of colors in flower gardens, and she expressed that intrigue in her initial watercolors. However, when she moved from landlocked Syracuse to harborside Boston, she developed a love of the ocean and spent years capturing the mesmerizing hues of seafoam, waves, and tidal pools. But artists go through life with eyes wide open, and one day while on her daily bike ride around her own North Shore neighborhood in Massachusetts, Meg rediscovered gardens. But this time around, she approached flowers from…

The word “elegant” is in regular use in both fashion and science; it can describe a certain understated self-assurance manifest in a choice of clothing, an arrangement of furniture, or the setting of a table—and, equally, the underlying structures of the universe or the routine transcription of RNA. It perfectly describes Deeda Blair. Most style mavens are surprised by her scientific expertise, and scientists are astonished by her style. If one penetrates those disparate worlds, however, one soon finds that neurobiologists credit her deep interest in helping them think through difficult questions, and that fashionistas must employ metaphors from 18th-century France to describe the impeccable way she dresses and entertains.” In this introduction to Deeda Blair’s just-released book, Food, Flowers, & Fantasy (Rizzoli 2022), author Andrew Solomon’s description of his…