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The Flower Shop: Charm, Grace, Beauty & Tenderness in a Commercial Context
If beauty is defined as a quality encompassing both extraordinary sensoriality and exemplary human behavior, then possibly the most beautiful flower shop in the world is located in Vienna’s low-key but hip 4th District. Blumenkraft (literally, “Flower Power”) is a place of inspiration, refuge, and virtue that will inform and enlighten anyone involved in design and modern commerce. Mixing analysis, anecdote, and observation, Leonard Koren once again reveals the key principles of practical wisdom at work in the world. His concise and lucid text is illustrated by his own photographs. Trained as an artist and architect, Leonard Koren is author of Arranging Things and the best-selling Wabi-Sabi . He lives in San Francisco.
- GenresNonfictionArt
112 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 15, 2021
Leonard Koren’s books are beautiful, concisely and poetically written works of art. Not only are they printed on lovely, coarse paper, but the full-page images accompanied by small paragraphs of lyrical musings are a joy to pass your hand over and absorb. It is simply a shame they are so hard to get your hands on nowadays, and that I hadn’t come across them sooner.
In The Flower Shop, Koren explains the day-to-day running of a contemporary, minimalist-influenced flower shop. Without explicitly saying so, he preaches about life and philosophy through his descriptions and observations. The shop itself and its owners and workers are beautiful and admirable, as are Koren’s softly melting moments of quiet reflection, sitting on the photographs like oil on water.
In The Flower Shop, Koren explains the day-to-day running of a contemporary, minimalist-influenced flower shop. Without explicitly saying so, he preaches about life and philosophy through his descriptions and observations. The shop itself and its owners and workers are beautiful and admirable, as are Koren’s softly melting moments of quiet reflection, sitting on the photographs like oil on water.
January 10, 2021
A lovely little book describing a flower shop in Vienna that is artful, humane, and magical, that creates an aesthetic experience from the moment to cross the threshold, that incorporates the visitor so it is never the same and always changing.
June 20, 2022
The Flower Shop is a book I've gifted, first myself and then some friends over the years who were interested in art, design, photography, and/or nonfiction--it's a blend of all of these genres and also its own distinctive work of art.
That said, it's far from stuffy or jargon-filled; it reads with a liveliness and charm that is like catching up with an old friend. You don't have to know a lot about flowers or gardening or business to enjoy this book. It's more like a slice-of-life that does not gloss over or glamorize some of the tiring and/or challenging elements of working with flowers and cranky customers and/or working during the holiday rush, either.
This book is very balanced in its depiction, and it feels in some passages (at least to me) like walking into a documentary about what it would be like (or would have been like in the mid-aughts) to run and/or work at a European flower shop. Setting is very important in this book.
Koren's book combines prose and sepia photography. The narrative is set in a real flower shop in Vienna, Austria. It gives factual details and interesting anecdotes about the owner (then in her late thirties) and her employees (also mostly in their thirties) as well as the unique layout and philosophy of this particular shop where injured flowers and flower petals are frequently given away or repurposed rather than tossed out and both a regular customer with his dog and a small child named Oskar drop by to hang out while Oskar's mom runs errands nearby.
One of my other favorite sections describes the unique features of the work tables and the art and how everything in the store was moved around twice a week. Other favorites are the lively snippets about how several of the employees got involved in becoming florists and/or working at this shop.
This is a book that is a delight to read the first time and each time I revisit it. Every few years, I remember it and reread it; when the memory of it returned to me this weekend, I pulled it out of storage to enjoy. It's only a little over 100 pages, with some pages having just a paragraph of text while others have several, and almost every page has gorgeous photography of the people, flowers, and architecture of this particular store.
On a whim last night, I looked up the flower shop on my phone (it never occurred to me any of the other times I've read the book, for some reason), and I was thrilled to see that it is still in Vienna as well as the full-color photos online. I have no idea if the same people still own and/or run it (I'd guess some/most might not--since the book was first published in 2005), but that hardly matters to savor the book.
There's an authentic beauty here, both in Koren's prose (which is inviting and distilled at the same time) and the accompanying photographs and their order in the book. This book is a keeper, especially for anyone interested in nonfiction, the arts, and/or even doing business in a more people-connective, friendly fashion. I know the book will invite me to reread it again sometime.
That said, it's far from stuffy or jargon-filled; it reads with a liveliness and charm that is like catching up with an old friend. You don't have to know a lot about flowers or gardening or business to enjoy this book. It's more like a slice-of-life that does not gloss over or glamorize some of the tiring and/or challenging elements of working with flowers and cranky customers and/or working during the holiday rush, either.
This book is very balanced in its depiction, and it feels in some passages (at least to me) like walking into a documentary about what it would be like (or would have been like in the mid-aughts) to run and/or work at a European flower shop. Setting is very important in this book.
Koren's book combines prose and sepia photography. The narrative is set in a real flower shop in Vienna, Austria. It gives factual details and interesting anecdotes about the owner (then in her late thirties) and her employees (also mostly in their thirties) as well as the unique layout and philosophy of this particular shop where injured flowers and flower petals are frequently given away or repurposed rather than tossed out and both a regular customer with his dog and a small child named Oskar drop by to hang out while Oskar's mom runs errands nearby.
One of my other favorite sections describes the unique features of the work tables and the art and how everything in the store was moved around twice a week. Other favorites are the lively snippets about how several of the employees got involved in becoming florists and/or working at this shop.
This is a book that is a delight to read the first time and each time I revisit it. Every few years, I remember it and reread it; when the memory of it returned to me this weekend, I pulled it out of storage to enjoy. It's only a little over 100 pages, with some pages having just a paragraph of text while others have several, and almost every page has gorgeous photography of the people, flowers, and architecture of this particular store.
On a whim last night, I looked up the flower shop on my phone (it never occurred to me any of the other times I've read the book, for some reason), and I was thrilled to see that it is still in Vienna as well as the full-color photos online. I have no idea if the same people still own and/or run it (I'd guess some/most might not--since the book was first published in 2005), but that hardly matters to savor the book.
There's an authentic beauty here, both in Koren's prose (which is inviting and distilled at the same time) and the accompanying photographs and their order in the book. This book is a keeper, especially for anyone interested in nonfiction, the arts, and/or even doing business in a more people-connective, friendly fashion. I know the book will invite me to reread it again sometime.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews