What Outlasts a Name

Decades ago, when I was deciding what to call this studio, I deliberately did not call it Flowers by James Dempsey. This essay is about why: about names and legacy, about the standard a practitioner builds that for now lives inside a single person, and about what it would take for a craft's knowledge to outlast the one who carries it. It closes on Halemaʻumaʻu, the crater at the summit of Kīlauea, whose collapsed floor is filling back toward its rim — a reminder that what drains away can come back within a working life.

Read by James Dempsey, AIFD. Part of Modern Floristry, a design blog by Studio Herbage Florist.