The Brooklyn-based floral designer Alex Crowder, 36, makes a point of limiting her materials to plants grown within 200 miles of New York City. To create arrangements for a lighting exhibition organized by the design firm Roman and Williams that opened this week in TriBeCa, she and her team at Field Studies Flora worked with SpadaFlora, a foraging company in New Jersey, to source “incredible twisty branches,” she says, while coppery spider chrysanthemums came from the Hudson Valley’s Treadlight Farm. On a 15-foot-tall Christmas tree spangled with red ribbon at Roman and Williams’s SoHo boutique, Crowder hung ornaments made from spiky datura seed pods and clusters of pine cones adorned with acorns. “We had an excess of them in the studio from other holiday projects,” says Crowder of the materials, “and we were trying to figure out, ‘How do we reuse these in a new, interesting way?’” She’s now selling the two designs through her website, along with a cocoon-like diamond of lichen, all strung from black velvet ribbons. Crowder’s aim, with the ornaments and her floral business as a whole, is to “draw people’s attention to materials that are often overlooked,” she says.
She’s not the only one turning to natural elements this year: the Los Angeles-based lifestyle brand Flamingo Estate has made a tradition of selling dried slices of citrus that can be hung from Christmas tree branches and emit a smoky fragrance. And for those who like the shine of a classic glass bauble, the British online home goods shop Abask offers glitter-dusted ones shaped like tropical blossoms. Below, a few more of our favorite holiday ornaments.
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