Read the full T Magazine feature.
Red Flower launched with three flower teas and six petal topped candles in December of 1999, NYC. The purpose of the teas was simple - community, beauty, connection to nature and the sensuality and vitality of drinking flowers together. Jasmine, Lavender and Rose - fresh dried herbs packaged with a traditional bombilla tea straw.
My family from Argentina had me in the yerba mate ritual from childhood and it was the best times with family sitting around my grandfather's table as he held a cube of sugar between his teeth and sipped yerba from the bombilla out of a leathery looking gourd, passing it on to the next person as stories were told and retold. And then living in Japan, where the connection to tea and each other is silent, so present is the olfactory and the aesthetic - attentive to the steam and the swirl of dark green matcha until you are mesmerized by the master’s skill. Nothing like the canned yerba mate tea in the beverage isles or the matcha and ice cubes floating through Manhattan. These traditional experiences where transcendent, ritualistic, deep and about time - time together, time to pay attention to the way a tea chawan feels in your hands.
The Red Flower Down to Earth Flower Tea Party is both a nod to our beginnings in flower teas as a way of creating connection and good feelings, and also to the power and simplicity of taking tea together. A tea party of any kind can draw on the significant traditions of tea culture across the globe including the delights and precision of high tea to the free-form garden variety we choose to celebrate at Pendry Natirar. Bringing together a group of friends from New York whose work and process in making things continues to be the first thread of deep influence on Red Flower, (including the slowunfolding of stitches that has made Zero + Maria Cornejo a pillar in the ways of being and doing for so many - thank you Maria and Marysia) to the fields of flowers and herbs cultivated by the purposeful hands of farmer and artist Melinda Paige Hopkins made for just the tea party that Red Flower is - close to nature, open to the sun and the sky, listening to stories, creating beautiful light and feeling free.
The celebration of the day was also a live Red Flower rose geranium distillation - making hydrosol to highlight the tender process of willing the essence from a giving plant.The back story to setting up the distiller in a barn in 90°F heat (thunder and lightening to add to the drama) with no running water became a quest - thanks Kelly and Erin! (will save this for another day but let’s say the short version is that Adam’s Pet Safari saved us with a home aquarium pump!)
Thankfully the rose geranium in the Pendry Natirar greenhouse was so fragrant and full of green life that working with it to coax out the hydrosol became a calming force - leaving the technical behind and letting nature do its work.
The rain came the next day and Melinda in her love for beauty made magic of the Red Flower petal topped candles and aromatic diffusers as if a fairy had descended onto the table and found our heart. Imagine an empty barn with a chandelier, rain and open barn doors, the scent of Red Flower Icelandic Moonflower candles and distilling rose geranium and beautiful friends wrapped in tall boots and umbrellas and raincoats making herbal bouquets on a garden.
And to further steep into process after the walk, guests created their own personalized Red Flower Flowers Hold Life aromatherapeutic body oil blend for safeguarding the day in a sweet, fragrant memory - bottled and blessed.
Thank you Pendry Natirar, Thank you friends, Thank you Red Flower for making and drinking fresh flower tea out of vintage tea cups, a fresh violet, garden spritz in Red Flower upcycled glasses - a toast in gratitude of being together, in rain and in sun.
Click here to read the full T Magazine feature on the event, impeccably captured by Kari Molvar.