Bouquet "Blue Harmony"

A blue delphinium bouquet built from a single garden variety, with no other flower and no foliage. Each tall stem is a long spike scored with dozens of small blooms — a vertical structure, not a rounded mass. True blue is one of the rarest colours in the plant kingdom, and delphinium is one of the few flowers that hold it without drifting into violet. Edward Steichen was one of the most important photographers of the 20th century — a co-founder of American modernist photography, later director of the department of photography at MoMA, where he curated "The Family of Man" in 1955. In the early 1930s he left his post as chief photographer for Condé Nast, moved to a 400-acre farm in Connecticut, and planted ten of those acres in nothing but delphiniums. He spent the next three decades breeding his own varieties, and served as president of the Delphinium Society of America. One of his cultivars he named "Carl Sandburg," after his brother-in-law — the three-time Pulitzer-winning poet who wrote "Chicago" and the six-volume biography of Lincoln. In June 1936, Steichen trucked his own delphiniums to MoMA and put them on view. The exhibition, "Edward Steichen's Delphiniums," was the first and only flower show in the museum's history. This bouquet inherits the same logic: the flower shown as its own subject. At the centre of each open bloom sits a small dark eye — breeders and florists call it the bee, for its shape. That contrast is what makes the blue read as depth rather than flatness. Best in a tall, narrow-necked vase — the stem is long and thin, and it will lean without support. (Unless the lean is what you want — the diagonal line works too, if it was your choice and not the vase's.) This same variety is also available in white, pink, and lavender — specify the palette on WhatsApp before ordering. Made to order, delivered in Paris at the time you book, Monday to Saturday.