A Collection

Sacred Hearts

The panacea the entire world needs,
conveniently hidden in a little unassuming
set of two hills and a point.

Look at what’s hiding in plain sight.

It keeps you physically alive. It keeps you spiritually alive. It is the one thing you can never have enough of — and when it runs thin, you end up exactly where the world is right now.

Go back far enough through the things you love most. The ambitions, the loyalties, the things you would defend at any cost. At the bottom of every one of them, tangled up in all the reasons you think are the answer, is love. Always. The real element. Hiding in plain sight.

The heart should be the most important symbol the world embraces. Not a decoration. Not a valentine. A reminder. An emblem of the one resource we most desperately need and most readily forget.

I have spent my life leading with this shape. I named my daughter Valentine. Love is not a sentiment I hold in reserve for occasions — it is the operating principle. The governing force. When you look deeply at what I make, and why, and for whom, there is only one word at the bottom of it.

Join the army of love.

Spring flowers laid out to dry on linen — Floral Alchemy

I — The Harvest

Springtime for me can feel like a kid in a candy store — everywhere you look there’s something you want. All the colors, all the textures. The pinks and the orchard blooms when all the climbers are blooming and the yarrow is beginning to pop and the dandelions are huge and the roses are at their most vibrant. It’s hard to do anything other than just collect. They’re so abundant, and so of the moment — if you miss it, it’s gone. A scavenger hunt for beauty. Wonder chasing wonder.

Corked glass vials of sorted dried petals on the studio table — Floral Alchemy

II — The Apothecary

This is really just my big wood table, set up as I preserve spring’s pigments — crushed or in fragments or whole petals, saved for future use. When the colors and the textures come in, it doesn’t matter yet how you’re going to use them. You just have to grab them while you can. I live with a sense of scarcity. When all of the beautiful things are available, I feel like I’m already hoarding — because I can picture how I’m going to use them.

The full working table — pressed specimens, vials, tools, fresh flowers — Floral Alchemy

III — The Studio

This image is a story of multitasking — not just securing material for pigment and color and texture, but pressing, curating, and labeling while also making it beautiful. So that I am firmly enmeshed in the present moment of how gorgeous everything around me is. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m taking pictures to document it or just to saturate my own senses. Flat lay pictures like this tell the story of a particular day and what was important. This was a beautiful day.

The Royal Academy — styled cabinet of curiosities with jewelry, botanical specimens, old books and maps — Floral Alchemy

IV — The Royal Academy

I was setting up to tell the background story of how I view the Royal Academy collection — its strong scientific leaning, the wording cases and old materials and older technology. Imagining what it was like to bring pieces home from other parts of the world and hope that they’re in good enough shape that you can share the wonder with the people at home who can hardly wait to hear about your adventures. Everything I gathered around me was something that gave me that feeling.

Love, Love, Love — a Sacred Heart pendant in a gold box lined with moss, roses surrounding it — Floral Alchemy

V — Love, Love, Love

This was a small piece of a photoshoot for the Vienne collection — the soft Parisian story, a young girl named Vienne. The tapestries suggesting courtiers from Versailles, the tiny roses, the etched crystal, the gold box filled with beautiful moss. I set this piece, named Love, Love, Love, to be the visual anchor for the whole collection. And yet inside that heart, all those colors are already pulling from the tapestry and the flowers all around it.

A botanical pendant held aloft by a bronze figurine with arms raised — Floral Alchemy

VI — The Offering

I had staged an elaborate, multilevel shrine of all my instruments and postcards and pieces and ephemera — blooms both pressed and dried, different frames, different props — just to create a whole back-west-window feeling of what Floral Alchemy is to me. I nailed it. And then this piece, given to me by a friend, became part of the environment. She seemed like the perfect one to hold it up. One of the stained glass window pieces.

Floral Alchemy Sacred Hearts collection in an ornate silver frame on antique world map fabric

Why These Hearts

Flowers talk to me so I can make things for you — because what they really want is to talk to you. Every Sacred Heart is a conversation spoken directly from nature, to help us remember who we are.

Every flower in every Sacred Heart was grown here — on this land, by my hands. I know each one. I watched it come up from seed. I followed it through its season. I was there when it was ready.

There are no suppliers. Nothing arrives in a box. Every element in every piece is something I have a personal relationship with — which means by the time a flower becomes part of a Sacred Heart, it has already lived an entire life.

What you are wearing is the only permanent record of something that will never bloom again. Made by the one person who knew it.

That is what I mean by sacred.

Which one is yours?

The Declaration

Some hearts are made to be seen. These are the ones you reach for when you need to tell the world something — not in words, not with explanation, but with the weight of what you are wearing. A declaration doesn't whisper.

Sacred Hearts

The Declaration

The Garden Born

The Wild

The Tender