Relative newcomers to the world of professional flower arranging, Ellie Jauncey and Anna Day of The Flower Appreciation Society, are gaining a vast and tasteful audience of fans who love their signature displays of bloom-filled swan planters and floral head dresses, as well as their distinct branding (you must see this). They met a year ago while working in a pub, but already count Toast and Fred Butler as clients. Last week, they welcomed My Friend’s House into their fabulous Hackney headquarters to tell us more about their work, their vase collection and, of course, their desks…

Your aesthetic is very distinct – how do you sum it up and what makes you different?
We think our art school backgrounds. I (Anna) did an illustration degree and Ellie did textiles. This gave us a strong visual sense.
We don’t just want to create beautiful flowers, but really care about all aspects of the design, such as the cards we send out with them, the website, all our promotional material. I think this is what keeps us excited about what we’re doing, and possibly helps makes us a bit unique.

What kind of things inspire your ideas?
Our style changes and develops all the time. Our displays are also very much affected by the seasons, the environment they are for and how long they need to last for. We like exploring new ways of making flowers beautiful, it keeps the job exciting and interesting.

Tell us about your studio, who sits where, where is your desk from…

Ellie faces the flower bonnet, looking out onto the courtyard – she likes seeing who’s coming and going. I sit facing the shelves, under the jugs. I get too distracted by the window view. We were very lucky to have our desk made for us by the lovely and marvelously named Bob the builder.

What’s on there just now?

Lots of invoices, a box of earl grey tea, some dried lavender, a very dead poppy, some salmon pink emulsion paint, a polystyrene head, a tape measurer, some of Ellie’s Ede scarves (from her knitwear label) and a very long to do list.

Do you have any favourite stationery?

We both have those orangey red moleskins.. Ellie has a blank one for daily lists, I have a diary one that has a page to scrawl on every week. They come everywhere with us, there’s a handy pouch at the back of them so we can collect things. We love good writing pens, we both hate biros- can’t write properly with them!

What do you like to have around you for inspiration and reference?

We really like looking at books and love going to explore Artwords bookshop just down the road in Old Street. It has a great selection of art books and magazines. The Dover Bookshop near Covent Garden has a brilliant selection of copyright free image books, which we find very useful for collaging.

Every month we try to buy a few magazines and current favourites are The Gentlewoman, Oh Comely and The Plant. We love collecting old crockery and cut glass vases, and of course our swans. We like to look at them a lot and rearrange them, and get really excited about what we create in them. We’re quite ruthless about editing our things as we are already running out of space and only moved in in June last year!

How did you manage to score so many brilliant jugs and swans?

We are always on the hunt for vases/vessels and swans and whenever we can we go to car boots and charity shops. It’s so nice having such specific things to search for and always being able to justify spending money on them. We look for things that we’d like to own in our houses, especially early cut glass, big china jugs (hard to find but so satisfying when you come across a good one) and of course our signature swans.
Our best tip is to get out of London, you can still find amazing bargains and look on eBay too.

Do you keep your workspace tidy?

Yes we really try. It seems to be a daily job, but we share our space with 3 friends who are set and prop makers and also need space, so we try to make sure we tidy at the end of each day.

Tell me about your banner design?

Anna made the cut out letters for our pop up shop which we had at the boxpark in shoreditch over valentine’s day. All our lettering is hand drawn, we like the aesthetic and it means we can design everything ourselves. We came up with the name because we both love Neil young and one day said ‘maybe we should all it the Neil young appreciation society.’ And then we were like…’ah! The flower appreciation society!!’

How about that pineapple and the peacock?

Our friend and studio partner Lizzie made them for us for a tropical event we did for the YCN student of the year awards. We decorated  shoreditch town hall with cut out parrots covered in African fabrics, an arch covered in tropical coloured giant dahlias, a giant pineapple lectern and pineapples sprayed gold for the table centres.

What have you got a coming up?

An exciting collaboration with Pomp de Franc – who makes incredible cakes. She’s in the process of making swan cakes, inspired by our vases and we’ll will add bundles of flowers to them for a photo shoot. We are also doing a stripe and floral headdress workshop for Patternity’s celebrating pattern festival in April. And wedding season is almost upon us…

Thanks so much Anna and Ellie. And, for the benefit of our readers, here’s one more close up of those swans…