Amsterdam Masterclass — 2–4 November 2024

2–4 November 2024 — Amsterdam, Netherlands — teaching a stone's throw from the world's flower auction.

The city gave the edition its rhythm before a single stem was cut. Amsterdam in early November is a low grey light and the clatter of bicycles, and the class had gathered a short drive from Aalsmeer, where the world's flowers are auctioned each morning. Three days, from the second to the fourth, in a bright upstairs room with a clock on the wall and grey aprons handed round the tables.

The teaching palette was soft and knowing: dusty lavender roses, apricot garden roses, blue delphinium, spherical dahlias and frilled parrot tulips, worked loose and airy in cream wraps. Around this quieter study the class built its showpiece — a long tablescape set against a wall of silver drapery. Here the mood turned bolder, red anthurium and gerbera pushing up through green bells of Ireland, trailing amaranthus overhead, chrome balloons catching the light, clear ghost chairs vanishing into a floor of silver foil. Red, white and green, staged like a set.

What lifted the edition, though, was the moment the flowers left the room. Bouquets in deep burgundy anthurium and hot-pink roses were carried out onto the pavement, past a parked bicycle with its front basket, ribbon printed with the academy's name trailing down. Flowers made indoors, met with the ordinary street that made them.

It closed inside the installation, among the red and the silver. One by one the florists were photographed with their blue certificates, some in a row, some seated alone in the green, three days quietly signed off.

The location

Amsterdam, Netherlands — the canal city, near the flower market.

The three days

Every touring edition runs the same Lacy Bird programme, rebuilt around the local market's flowers:

• Day one — colour theory and the house palette, the composition system, the boxed arrangement and the round commercial bouquet.
• Day two — the spreading bouquet, wrapping and presentation, and a professional photoshoot of every participant's finished work.
• Day three — large-scale event decor and installation, the business of floristry, and certificates.

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