Livia Cetti has always been smitten with paper flowers. She spotted her first specimens while trolling vintage markets with her mother, an antiques dealer, when she was growing up near Santa Barbara. “I started making paper flowers at age 13,” she says, “though my calling took a while to develop.”
Cetti constructs each artificial bloom—from foxglove to geranium to hollyhock—primarily from pieces of matte tissue paper. Three- to four-inch-long strips are rotary-cut, hand-dipped in a diluted bleach solution, and then hung to dry above an oversize sink. Next she employs an arsenal of fringing and crimping tools to articulate petals; each leaf is cut (and often painted) by hand. Finally, she twists all the parts together on floral wire and adheres them with floral tape, then affixes an old-world botanical-style label with the name of her firm, the Green Vase.
“I draw from my imagination—not from pictures or cuttings—and also from the Wave Hill public garden here in Riverdale,” she says. “My versions are definitely not anatomically correct!” She’s not stopping at flowers either, although she routinely fills orders from John Derian for foxgloves and potted geraniums (40 to 50 at a time). Look for tufts of wild grasses, flowering maple branches, and variegated citrus specimens to make their appearance this spring.
