Lumière is the brightest piece in the collection. Magenta roses and hot-pink gladiolus sit against purple carnations, chrysanthemums and hydrangea, with hand-finished anthurium in turquoise and peach cutting across the palette and trailing green amaranthus spilling out to one side. Slim allium heads float above the arrangement on bare stems. It is deliberately unbalanced, and that is where its energy comes from.
The allium is a flowering onion, botanically kin to garlic and chives, and each of those perfect spheres is made of dozens of tiny star-shaped flowers opening together. It holds its form as it dries, which is why it so often outlives the rest of an arrangement.
The amaranthus has been cultivated for thousands of years, first as a grain crop across the Americas rather than as a cut flower, and its name comes from the Greek for unfading. Here it does the structural work, breaking the outline and giving the composition its downward movement against all that upward colour.
Finished in the signature Amicis copper box with lilac tissue, the warm metal pulling the violets toward something richer. The photograph shows the Large size.