“I just want you to know how much I appreciate your dropping off this wonderful little flower. It truly brightens my day. I’ll look at it constantly.” The smallest gift or gesture can can bring comfort, hope and a little bit of joy to a dear friend or loved one during a hospital stay. The 1960s floral industry slogan, “ Say it with flowers.” couldn’t be more powerful in this setting. Always think small and [...]
Recently, I had the opportunity to check off the first of a number of Bucket List trips. This one was my first cross country road trip, taking me beyond Wisconsin through South Dakota and down through Utah. It was the most one on one time my brother and I have spent together since I left home for college. My experiences were feasts for my eyes: Big Skies, Big Mountains, Big Vistas that brought up Big [...]
Assignment: Sterling Fellows event hosted at The Yale Center for Engineering Innovation & Design (CEID). Design a centerpiece for a 40’ x 4’ table that is evocative of the activity that takes place in this lab. Palette, blue, and coral. Solution: Sound waves move through space. Extruded 24” aluminum channels reference engineered metals. Slender stems of Volkenfried Delphiniums allude to wiring and their precisely aligned waves of blue florets trace the path of a sound [...]
Assignment: A Sterling Fellows event at the Ingalls Hockey Rink celebrating Athletics at Yale University. The palette is Blue and White, the table is huge. Design Solution: An Abstraction of Athletics at Yale! A runner centerpiece using black vinyl clad chicken wire evoking the nets of Tennis, Volleyball, basketball, Lacrosse, Field Hockey and Soccor is the “playing field” for those sports, with a bit of Golf thrown in! Sprays of blue Delphinium evoke trajectories and [...]
Sending flowers as an expression of condolences for the loss of a loved one is an intimate, thoughtful, heartfelt gesture between between dear friends and family. For me, these assignments are never taken lightly. Inspiration for designing expressions of sympathy in bereavement are most successful when elements of the design connect the two parties. In this example the order was placed by a client who was born and raised in South Africa and strongly affected by [...]
The annual Yale University Art Gallery’s Board of Trustees dinner honored Robert & Anna Shapiro, collectors and donors of modern and contemporary art, for their significant gifts to the Gallery. I was shown this photograph by Tim Davis to draw inspiration for the table centerpieces for the dinner tables.Initially I had a hard time wrapping my head around this image. The event planner assignment: “I am looking for centerpieces that are minimal in design. Would like [...]
A story of a dahlia tuber that saved a parent’s sanity and possibly a child’s life. Tucker has had a love affair with Dahlias since he was a child . Their extraordinary jewel color palette and many forms have enchanted him his entire life. Last Fall, he met Maria Kayne at his hands-on demonstration for the joint Woodbridge and Orange, Connecticut Garden Clubs. Maria Kayne had brought an eye-popping selection of dahlias to the demonstration. [...]
The Daisy form, reduced to 5 petals and a contrasting circular center, is as ubiquitous as the Smiley face is for people who grew up in or lived during the 1960s and 1970s. It is associated with the hippie movement and the Peace movement of that era. This month I designed my high school’s 50th reunion and selected this Daisy image as the starting point for the design of the event. It is both curious [...]
A look into Tucker’s Design Process This is the shield of Yale’s new Jackson School of Global Affairs established by the generous gift of John and Susan Jackson. It is the launch pad for intentional design of floral arrangements to welcome the Jackson family to New Haven for the dedication of the new School that they made possible. My design process began with the palette of the School Shield; yellow, white and blue. For [...]
“The Corsage Finds A Fresh Way To Make A Statement”— The New York Times 9/13/22 It seems that Tucker is at the forefront of floral jewelry for men! In November of 2019 I was commissioned by a young architect to design “memorable” boutonnières for his partner and himself to wear at the firm's upcoming holiday party. They showed me their dinner jackets and turned me loose. After rummaging through the holiday decorations department of my [...]
