Eternal bloom

Interior Design

 Köln-based Isabelle Niehsen’s Christmas wreaths encapsulate the natural beauty of the year gone by. In her workshop, she talks Konfekt through the delicate art of giving dried blossoms and grasses new life.

 “Even if my wreaths seem wild and opulent, meticulous order is very important,” says Isabelle Niehsen in her florist’s shop, Où j’ai grandi, on Köln’s Rathenauplatz. At her feet are labelled cardboard boxes that are full of dried flowers and grasses: roses, carnations, tulips and lilies nestle among hydrangeas, millet stalks, fennel, white puffs of baby’s breath and sprigs of Iceland moss.

Curiously, there is nothing that you would expect to find in a Christmas wreath. “We don’t use fir or pine branches,” says the self-taught floral designer, who wears a British military overall and her curly hair pinned up. The wreaths on sale at Où j’ai grandi are created to last not just for a few weeks but for years. “They are like a kaleidoscope of the past year, combining the flowers of spring, summer and autumn,” says Niehsen as she takes a handful of ruscus from one of the boxes. “Ruscus is light green but this one has been bleached after drying, then coloured in a shade of cream.”

From another box, she plucks a couple of butterfly ranunculus, whose leaves have curled as they have dried and turned a rusty pale burgundy. “In the 1980s there was a hype around dried flowers and, as in fashion, it’s coming back in floristry,” she says, fishing out a few palm-sized pieces of dyed Iceland moss.

Niehsen loves creating fresh bouquets and flower arrangements. But what fascinates her so much about working with dried plants are the endless possibilities that it offers. “We dry some of the flowers and grasses ourselves,” she says. Everything at Où j’ai grandi that isn’t sold fresh is first hung upside down from the ceiling; it is then taken down and stored in the cardboard boxes until winter. Niehsen also buys dried flowers. 

“The freeze-dried blossoms are particularly beautiful,” she says. “They resemble fresh flowers but are almost everlasting. Then there are the air-dried blossoms, which are a kind of memento mori. Their wilted petals and toned-down colours convey a melancholy charm. The combination of the two kinds is what makes the wreaths so appealing.” 

 Niehsen carefully grasps her selection with both hands and carries it into the back room. There, the sun breaks through the window to the courtyard and illuminates the workplace. She begins to attach the flat, coloured pieces of moss to a large ring with long pins. “I avoid symmetry at all costs,” she says. “To create three-dimensionality, I work according to the principle of having three levels.” She creates the lowest level from Iceland moss, which completely covers the green compostable base and provides the wreath’s basic colours – in this case, yellow, rose and mauve. “These aren’t typical Christmas colours but these kinds of wreaths are very much in demand,” she says with a smile. 

Niehsen creates the second layer using cream-coloured ruscus and freeze-dried hydrangeas that have been dyed pale pink. “I tie the hydrangea blossoms together with a little extra wire to form small florets, which look even prettier.”

Raised in the village of Sankt Vith on the Belgium-Germany border, Niehsen moved to Liège in order to study graphic design. After three years at the city’s École Supérieure des Arts Saint-Luc, she decamped to the Kunsthochschule für Medien in Köln, where moving image was taught as part of her course. “I thought that Michel Gondry’s music videos were great and wanted to do something like those,” she says. 

But fate had other plans. As a student, she took an office job at modelling agency Nine Daughters and a Stereo, where she met her future partner and father of her two children, who was working as a model. By the time the agency changed its name to Tomorrow Is Another Day and began redefining male modelling, Niehsen was the personal assistant of its founder, Eva Gödel, and she constantly had the likes of photographers Steven Meisel and Serge Leblon on the phone. “The job was exciting and varied but I was almost 30 and didn’t see myself as someone who would permanently be at a desk,” she says. “So, in 2011, I followed an impulse and went into business for myself.”

 Niehsen established Où j’ai grandi‚ which means “Where I grew up”, as a floral design studio exploring traditional Parisian art du bouquet. “It’s inspired by Flemish flower paintings from the 16th century too,” she says. She discovered a small vacant shop on the Rathenauplatz, adjoining the Belgian Quarter to the south, around the corner from where she was living at the time. “I love this place,” she says, looking out of the window at the wild garden. Then she returns to her work. “The second level of this wreath, which I’m going to complete with baby’s breath, generates volume and serves as a framework for the third level.”

Niehsen pauses for a moment to assess the wreath. “I can see gaps here and there,” she says. “But those will be filled in the next step. With the third layer, I want to give the impression that the flowers are floating, almost flying.” With that, she grabs a yolk-yellow tulip and fixes it to a wire with hot glue. The flower now seems to be growing out of the level below. “On these levels, I create groupings, islands of different flowers that are harmonious in themselves and catch the eye.” Konfekt watches as she creates an island from dried marigolds, whose bright orange has darkened somewhat, radiant fennel umbels and one of the noble freeze-dried roses. Tiny yellow limonium flowers now come into play; these fill the final empty spaces.

After about three hours, Niehsen steps back and tilts her head. “Spelt-yellow candles would be nice with this,” she says and takes four of them out of a drawer in the sales room. She will compose about 60 of these wreaths over the next three weeks with her colleague Margret Brockel in this former carpenter’s workshop. “Afterwards, we’ll have calluses on our fingertips,” she says. Perhaps she will soon be relieved of some of the work by diligent pupils. Niehsen plans to offer floristry courses with the slogan “Un jour a l’école fleuri” (“A flowery day at school”), giving nature lovers the chance to explore first hand the infinite possibilities of shaping dried flowers into long-lasting wonders.

Konfekt 13,
Winter 23/24