New York Magazine
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In just five years, Emily Thompson has risen to the heights of floral design with her eponymous business (emilythompsonflowers.com). As she prepares for one of her biggest events yet—a September 7 F.I.T luncheon honoring Valentino at Lincoln Center—I wondered, does she bring her work home with her? It turns out she does. Take, for instance, her living-room fireplace, with arrangements made with porcelain vine, rose hips, dahlias, Champagne grapes, castor pods, and clematis. They almost seem to be moving. She also made the ceramic duck on the mantel.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
Emily and her husband, sportswriter Austin Kelley, live on the parlor floor of a mansion originally built by the Adams family (of Chiclets gum-empire fame) in Park Slope. “It is reputedly haunted by a family of servants who were abandoned in the elevator when the owners went on holiday,” Emily tells me. Their apartment is wood-paneled and graced with large windows. Emily has lots of hanging pots and a stash of fresh rosemary in the kitchen.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
The bedroom and living room are divided by a largely glass wall that lets daylight through.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
There is always a fresh flower by the bed; the day of my visit, it was a fiery dahlia in a Brazilian mate cup.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
Wild grasses overflow from a chalice in the living room. Emily is known for her lush, baroque sensibility, but I love that she also pays attention to the kind of simple greens you could practically pick from a vacant lot on the street.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
I especially loved her tiny flowers, one to an egg-cup, sitting next to a much more exuberant bouquet.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
The living room has the feeling of a turn-of-last-century gentleman’s club, with all the wood and leather. The amazing ceramic swan filled with dahlias and greens on the coffee table bench took Emily a year to make. She is an artist first, having studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and getting her M.F.A. in sculpture at UCLA.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
Here Emily is in her front hall pointing out a few paintings by her great-great-aunt.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
The improvised dining table is set with a variety of kale, Swiss chard, persimmons, radishes, pattypan squash, plums, zinnias, litchis, and crabapple, all perched in her grandmother’s copper cooking pots. The splayed forks are used for serving.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
The swan is filled with dahlias and sago palm, making a somewhat unusual centerpiece.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
But the true reveal is when the centerpiece is empty: The swan carries an egg in its beak! The large crack occurred during firing, and Emily accepted it as part of the artistic process.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
For me, the high point of the show is this, which manages simultaneously to be a painting, a force field, and an electromagnetic visual discharge. This is an artist sloughing off old consciousness, making something he doesn’t even know is art, giving up nearly all known languages of painting, and maybe violating the laws of nature by making something that seemingly puts off more energy than went into making it.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
For me, the high point of the show is this, which manages simultaneously to be a painting, a force field, and an electromagnetic visual discharge. This is an artist sloughing off old consciousness, making something he doesn’t even know is art, giving up nearly all known languages of painting, and maybe violating the laws of nature by making something that seemingly puts off more energy than went into making it.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
For me, the high point of the show is this, which manages simultaneously to be a painting, a force field, and an electromagnetic visual discharge. This is an artist sloughing off old consciousness, making something he doesn’t even know is art, giving up nearly all known languages of painting, and maybe violating the laws of nature by making something that seemingly puts off more energy than went into making it.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
For me, the high point of the show is this, which manages simultaneously to be a painting, a force field, and an electromagnetic visual discharge. This is an artist sloughing off old consciousness, making something he doesn’t even know is art, giving up nearly all known languages of painting, and maybe violating the laws of nature by making something that seemingly puts off more energy than went into making it.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
For me, the high point of the show is this, which manages simultaneously to be a painting, a force field, and an electromagnetic visual discharge. This is an artist sloughing off old consciousness, making something he doesn’t even know is art, giving up nearly all known languages of painting, and maybe violating the laws of nature by making something that seemingly puts off more energy than went into making it.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
For me, the high point of the show is this, which manages simultaneously to be a painting, a force field, and an electromagnetic visual discharge. This is an artist sloughing off old consciousness, making something he doesn’t even know is art, giving up nearly all known languages of painting, and maybe violating the laws of nature by making something that seemingly puts off more energy than went into making it.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
For me, the high point of the show is this, which manages simultaneously to be a painting, a force field, and an electromagnetic visual discharge. This is an artist sloughing off old consciousness, making something he doesn’t even know is art, giving up nearly all known languages of painting, and maybe violating the laws of nature by making something that seemingly puts off more energy than went into making it.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
For me, the high point of the show is this, which manages simultaneously to be a painting, a force field, and an electromagnetic visual discharge. This is an artist sloughing off old consciousness, making something he doesn’t even know is art, giving up nearly all known languages of painting, and maybe violating the laws of nature by making something that seemingly puts off more energy than went into making it.
Photo: Wendy Goodman
For me, the high point of the show is this, which manages simultaneously to be a painting, a force field, and an electromagnetic visual discharge. This is an artist sloughing off old consciousness, making something he doesn’t even know is art, giving up nearly all known languages of painting, and maybe violating the laws of nature by making something that seemingly puts off more energy than went into making it.
