Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Podcast Index | RSS | More

This week’s conversation is one I’ve wanted to record for a while. You know when you run into someone you really like — and who you want to get to know better, perhaps at the grocery store, or (for me) at the flower market — and you greet one another warmly and say “we should get together for coffee?”

Well that was the case with my friend Anne Bradfield. Owner of a design studio called Floressence, Anne was one of the very first floral designers I found myself chatting with back in 2011 when the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market launched.

At the time, I was there frequently, both because I was working on my two books, The 50 Mile Bouquet – which featured the stories of many of the flower farmers and floral designers involved with the market, and Slow Flowers, a project that relied on a steady supply of local blooms for my weekly design projects. And I often ran into Anne, who was there shopping for her major wedding and corporate event clients.

Anne soon invited me to speak at a meeting of the Greater Seattle Floral Association, where I met many of our region’s top wedding, event and retail florists. And we kept bumping into one another. . . both always in a rush, and always promising to get together.

You may recognize Anne’s voice because I recorded it for this podcast a few months ago when I interviewed several designers who participated in Lisa Waud’s hands-on large-scale floral art workshop at the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market. And that encounter was the impetus for today’s conversation.

Anne studied interdisciplinary visual art at the University of Washington and she will share how her journey led her through a few career stops before she purchased Floressence thirteen years ago, when she was in her late twenties.

READ MORE…