IT WAS COOPER’S fantastical approach that inspired Louis-Géraud Castor, who studied archaeology and art history at the Sorbonne and worked as an art dealer for 15 years, to transition into floristry. In 2017, he opened Castor Fleuriste in a courtyard in Paris’s Marais district. With an eye for purist design, he creates monochromatic swirls of hortensias, yarrow and amaranth that are reminiscent of topiaries; bowls of waterlilies; and snowy mountains of muscari in primitive raw wooden vessels — all of them tailored to the scale and drama of the mantel. “I take cues from Mother Nature and connect them to artists I admire,” says Castor, who counts the Modernist designer Eileen Gray and Jean-Michel Frank as particular influences. (He often uses vases custom-made by the Parisian ceramist Mathilde Martin to elevate his arrangements.) “I always tell my clients to just give me a color and let me take it from there,” he says, citing a mantel arrangement he did for the designer Nicolas Ghesquière’s Paris apartment as an example. Ghesquière asked for blue and orange, Castor says, so he picked spindly alpine sea holly, tawny day lilies and ultramarine sweet peas to create a spiky, oversize bouquet. “A good florist is a good colorist,” he says.
Taking a more restrained approach is the Sydney-born Simone Gooch, who makes mantel arrangements at her London studio, Fjura, that almost resemble Japanese ikebana. “I consider each flower as I’m placing it, and it’s not always the case that more is more,” says Gooch, who has collaborated with Chanel, Hermès, Loewe and Lanvin. But nothing delights her more than working in private homes, as she likes riffing on existing design elements. “The width of the mantelpiece determines just how abundant you can go,” says Gooch, who might use descending columbines or boughs of flowering quince for a larger hearth versus violets, lilies of the valley and pansies for a shallow ledge. She gets inspiration at times by looking through the vases, containers and pottery that her clients have collected. “Everything displayed on a mantel is usually deliberate and deeply intimate,” she says. “It connects me not just to the history of someone’s home but also to their personal past.”
Werber, too, enjoys mixing ephemeral blooms with timeless pieces. His recent composition of vanda orchids, golden pothos, star-shaped cryptanthus, colchicum bulbs and glimmering castor leaves was set off by the artist Alison Layton’s brass philodendron vines. “Small arrangements may be fine for the tablescape,” he says, “but when it comes to the mantel, there’s really nothing like a grand gesture.”
Metal artist: Alison Layton. Photo assistant: Liam Sheehan. Set assistant: Kervens Mazile. Floral assistant: Kinga Mojsa
