Paper Flower Workshop with Livia Cetti

Livia Cetti, floral stylist and paper flower artist at The Green Vase taught a potted Persian fritillaria plant workshop at Milton Market in Litchfield.

Jennifer Almquist

Paper Flower Workshop with Livia Cetti

On Saturday March 22, Milton Market in Cobble Court, Litchfield welcomed Livia Cetti of The Green Vase back for the eighth paper flower workshop with her. Guests were invited to create a potted Persian fritillaria plant, and to be a part of the joyous community of The Green Vase workshops.

Milton Market is in a former 18th century blacksmith shop tucked into Cobble Court in Litchfield. Owner Martha Fish opened her “luxury general store,” in 2019. Her previous career in fashion included being an executive at Calvin Klein.

Jennifer Almquist

Livia Cetti of The Green Vase has forged a career based on beauty. A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, Cetti built on her Santa Barbara childhood love of flowers and became a floral stylist. After years working with Martha Stewart, she became a contributing editor at “Martha Stewart Weddings” and style director at “Brides” magazine. She began her own floral business in 2005, The Green Vase. A client asked if she could make some paper hibiscus as a Caribbean wedding cake topper. Thus, was born a creative blossoming using paper and scissors, a sort of aesthetic alchemy or magical transformation of simple materials into flowers that rival the beauty of the original.

The paper flower workshop at the Milton Market was fun, relaxed, filled with laughter, and the guests created stunning blossoms during the four-hour session. A giant sweep of forsythia blossoms set on a massive central table made a joyous statement that Spring had arrived. Participants enjoyed champagne and snacks. Bobby Graham of Salisbury, who recently left a career at Condé Nast, is about to open a shop (with his husband) in Sharon called Dugazon. He recalled the first Cetti workshop he attended at Milton Market as “kind of wild” with twelve people snipping and folding.

Livia CettiPhoto by Jennifer Almquist

It is a pleasure to watch Cetti’s hands work with skill and grace, informed by the thousands of paper flowers she makes each year. Her distinctive floral style shows up in the pages of “The World of Interiors,” “House & Garden UK,” and graced eight covers of “Martha Stewart Weddings.” Her website states, “All paper flowers are entirely hand-crafted by Livia and her small staff of talented artisans in the Bronx, NY. Each piece is meant to be an impressionistic gesture capturing the spirit of the flower, and just like the real thing, no two will ever be exactly alike.”

Check out Milton Market and The Green Vase on Instagram: @miltonmarketct and @thegreenvase

Latest News

East Canaan's CowPots to face the 'Sharks'

Amanda Freund of East Canaan will appear on the television show "Shark Tank" on April 4 to pitch CowPots.

Photo by Ruth Epstein

CANAAN — Fans of the television show “Shark Tank,” stay tuned. On Friday, April 4, Amanda Freund of East Canaan will be facing the panel, imploring members to invest in her unique product: cow poop.

Freund and her father Matthew Freund produce and market CowPots, which are made from the abundance of manure found on their dairy farm. Matthew Freund, realizing cows were producing more manure — 100 pounds per cow per day — than was needed for fertilizing fields for crops, came up with the concept of the pots. Years of trial-and-error experimentation finally resulted in success. In 2006 he began selling the biodegradable pots using 100% composted manure to local stores. Now the pots can be found in outlets across the country, as well as internationally.

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss lacrosse ices Kingswood Oxford 19-0

LAKEVILLE — The Hotchkiss School opened the girls varsity lacrosse season with a big win in the snow against Kingswood Oxford School.

The Bearcats won 19-0 in a decisive performance March 26. Twelve different players scored for Hotchkiss, led by Coco Sheronas with four goals.

Keep ReadingShow less
HVRHS releases second quarter honor roll

FALLS VILLAGE — Principal Ian Strever announces the second quarter marking period Honor Roll at Housatonic Valley Regional High School for the 2024-2025 school year.

Highest Honor Roll

Grade 9: Parker Beach (Cornwall), Mia Belter (Salisbury), Lucas Bryant (Cornwall), Addison Green (Kent), Eliana Lang (Salisbury), Alison McCarron (Kent), Katherine Money (Kent), Mira Norbet (Sharon), Abigail Perotti (North Canaan), Karmela Quinion (North Canaan), Owen Schnepf (Wassaic), Federico Vargas Tobon (Salisbury), Emery Wisell (Kent).

Keep ReadingShow less
Thomas Ditto

ANCRAMDALE — Thomas Ditto of Ancramdale, born Thomas David DeWitt Aug. 11, 1944 in New York City changing his surname to Ditto at marriage, passed peacefully on Pi Day, March 14, 2025. He was a husband, father, artist, scientist, Shakespeare scholar, visionary, inventor, actor, mime, filmmaker, clown, teacher, lecturer, colleague, and friend. Recipient of numerous grants, awards and honors in both the arts and sciences, a Guggenheim and NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts fellow, he was a creative genius beyond his time. In addition to authoring scores of papers, he held several patents and invented the first motion capture system and the Ditto-scope, a radically new kind of telescope. He was a pioneer in computer generated video, film, and performance.

When not hard at work, he was always there to help when needed and he knew how to bring smiles to faces. He loved his family and pets and was supportive of his wife’s cat rescue work.

Keep ReadingShow less