Ken Hobart, a creative director with the Becker Group, was incorrectly identified in Sunday's Distinction magazine.
The Sun regrets the errors.
Mantels are a natural for holiday decorating. They define the fireplace -- the focus of any room, particularly when a fire is blazing.
But, with Christmas trees, door decorations and table arrangements getting top priority, mantels often get token attention at holiday time. A few red candles and some pine branches are often the extent of ornamentation.
So this year, we asked five of Baltimore's top floral designers if they could create mantels that are visually exciting and out-of-the-ordinary. They accepted the challenge and presented us with five marvelous mantels.
Mark Fabian and Suzanne Rafferty: Mark Fabian and Suzanne Rafferty describe their work as "loose and airy, with lots of movement."
"We like designs that dance and sing," says Ms. Rafferty. "We also like to bring nature into the house by using vines and other natural plant material," continues Mr. Fabian. Witty and outgoing, the pair have a natural enthusiasm that is reflected in their work. "We like to take a design and go as far as we can with it," says Ms. Rafferty.
The inspiration for their mantel design was an elegant Guilford dining room -- a unique blend of English and Mediterranean architecture -- and the room's fireplace itself, which had an elaborate poured-concrete mantel and surround. A 1913 Baltimore original, the fireplace called for something "sensual and lush," says Ms. Rafferty.
The team complied with five dozen pink, peach, coral, light salmon and soft yellow roses, peach lilies, hydrangea and milkweed pods touched with gold paint, ivy, honeysuckle vines and one large, gold-tipped Oriental cabbage. Swished carefully through the flowers and plants were yards of silver-glazed crushed silk. Each wall sconce was decorated with its own bouquet of roses.
The designers have some practical advice on working with flowers to create a mantel arrangement: To extend the life of flowers, cut stems under water; plunge the stems of wild plants like honeysuckle vines into boiling water for six or seven seconds before using them.
Their most important advice, on holiday decorating in general, is offered by Mr. Fabian: "Get out of the Christmas rut and try something new."
Ken Robart: Ken Robart does holidays for a living. As a creative director for the Becker Group, a Baltimore-based company specializing in seasonal decor, he zips around the country designing holiday decorations for corporate buildings and shopping malls.
For his own holiday decorating, as well as the work he does for private clients, he often dips into the past for inspiration. "To me, Christmas is a collection of memories," he says, recalling his childhood in New York state. "So when I think of holiday decorating, I often think of using collections." His list includes angels, nutcrackers and Christmas ornaments.
"The most unforgettable mantel I ever saw was decorated with a collection of 100 cream-colored candles in every size and shape you could possibly imagine," he recalls. "Instead of greens, mixed in with the candles were bare tree twigs. It was wonderful."
For his holiday mantel, Mr. Robart combined collections of gingerbread ornaments, tin toys, tiny knit stockings, birdhouses, bird nests, artificial apples and pears, all entwined in a thick garland of greens and looped with a red burlap ribbon. To complement the mantel design, he created a unique tree made from wood moss.
"I think my mantel is whimsical yet very homey and family-centered," he says. "I used artificial materials, but you could use real gingerbread that you baked yourself; you could string cranberries and use them; you could use real pine, fruit and berries." The trick, he adds, is to combine in the garland whatever makes you feel like Christmas.
Barbara Taylor: Barbara Taylor is well-known for her lush and romantic floral designs. Her cottagelike home is surrounded by gardens and decorated with window boxes. Inside, flowers are everywhere -- floral fabrics cover chairs, giant pink roses are splashed on the dining room wall covering, hand-painted flowers dance along the kitchen floor.
For her holiday mantel, she used what she loves best -- flowers. Her choices -- casa blanca lilies, tineki roses, white wax flowers, lisianthus buds -- tumble from 19th-century porcelain mantel vases. Complementing the flowers and the vases are two elaborate girandoles, designed with dangling amber crystal teardrops. Ivy, entwined with flowers, runs across the mantel and decorates the fireplace surround.
While flowers are the dominant element, the inspiration for the design came from the 19th-century pine mantel. "This mantel is my most prized possession," says Ms. Taylor. "It has everything I love -- swags of roses and morning glories tied with bows, birds, acorns, even dogs -- carved into its design."
Like the flowers in the mantel design, the other materials Ms. Taylor uses for holiday decorating are often not typical of the season. "I have used pots decorated with pretty bows and filled with amaryllis or paperwhite narcissus and I once swagged the mantel in a heavy green garland entwined with vegetables and fruits," she says.
One flower almost always seen in a Barbara Taylor design is the rose. Her advice for using roses includes: Never use metal containers, especially silver, to display roses; condition roses by holding their stems under water and cutting off about an inch of stem; use a drop of bleach in the rose water to kill bacteria. "And, if your roses are about to droop, give them a nice bath by submerging them in a tub of warm water," she adds.
Robert Zimmerman: Robert Zimmerman, a floral designer for 25 years and a former exhibit designer for the Baltimore Museum of Art, admits to being "somewhat of a traditionalist" with his holiday floral creations. But he might take something traditional like the holiday colors of red and white, and give them a new twist. He recalls once using white lilacs, white and red tulips and red ginger at a family holiday party.
He also gravitates to traditional Christmas plants like poinsettias. "Poinsettias don't survive extremely well as cut flowers," he says, "but you can still use them in designs. I buy carefully selected single-bloom plants, take them out of the pots and carefully place their root balls in plastic sandwich bags, which I tie. To keep the plants moist during the holidays, open the bag and give the roots a squirt of water using something like a turkey baster."
To decorate his 1884 slate fireplace, Mr. Zimmerman chose red poinsettias, white dendrobium orchids, red and white carnations and cork bark euonymus, whose stems were stripped of leaves and then sprayed-painted a purplish-red. A Baltimore City resident, he also added what he calls "inner city ivy," grown downtown, as well as holly and magnolia leaves.
Two early 19th-century porcelain fruit coolers and two old plastic boxes covered in gold foil were the inspiration for the dramatic design on the faux marble mantel. An advocate of using what's on hand, Mr. Zimmerman rummages around to find just the right objects to use in his holiday creations.
If his clients have nothing he deems appropriate, he will dig into his own prop closet. "I have one silver tureen that has probably been to more holiday parties than Perle Mesta," he adds with a chuckle.
Clare Stewart: For Clare Stewart of Upsy Daisy, a floral design business, holiday decorating is just as interesting at Thanksgiving as it is at Christmas. She has long been the flower arranger for her family's Thanksgiving table.
"My job is always the same," says Ms. Stewart. "I get up and take a walk every Thanksgiving morning and find the things to fill up a clay turkey that sits in the middle of the table." She might pick some seed pods, gather some fresh herbs, find a few pheasant feathers, which she mixes together in a style that blends whimsy with tradition.
For this Thanksgiving project, she scouted her own woods and gardens, coming up with an assortment of items, such as wild clematis, wild eupatorium and grape vines. A house search yielded pumpkins, potatoes, a handcrafted basket with antler handles, a terra pot and a hand-carved folk art turkey.
To this eclectic mix, she added flowers: yellow and brown sunflowers, brilliant orange lilies, yellow yarrow and rich burgundy celosia. "I always start with the tallest part of the arrangement first and then fill in with other materials, and I like some of the plants to cascade off the mantel," she says.
Like Ken Robart, Ms. Stewart encourages the use of collections in the decorating of holiday mantels. She began an angel collection for each of her now-grown daughters when they were toddlers. While the angels have never graced fireplace mantels in the Stewart household, they cover the family Christmas tree from top to bottom.
The do's and don'ts of mantel design
Advice for would-be mantel designers from our stylists:
* Consider your decorating style and your lifestyle. Ultra-modern mantel designs in rooms filled with French antiques don't usually work, nor do fussy decorations for families with a casual lifestyle.
* Take a good, hard look at your fireplace -- is it traditional, contemporary, elaborate, plain, small, large? An opulent design on a small, simple mantel works no better than a few holly sprigs on a grand one.
* If you don't have a mantel, don't fret. Mantel designs can be used anywhere there is a flat surface -- desks, tables, sideboards, counter tops.
* Look in and around your house for decorating items. Search your yard for interesting seed pods, dried plants, natural greenery. Comb your house for unique containers or collections. Pull out the Christmas decorations to find special ornaments or other items.
* Before placing plants in an oasis (the green foam material used for anchoring floral arrangements), be sure it is thoroughly soaked (put it in a tub of water and let it sink naturally to the bottom). A saturated oasis will keep the plants firmly in place.
* Turn the thermostat down a few extra degrees during the holidays and pull draperies if the natural light is very strong. Nothing does in a holidays floral design quicker than heat and light.
* Mist the design with water if the plant material begins to dry.
* Most of all, as floral designer Suzanne Rafferty says, "relax and enjoy the experience" of creating a holiday design for your home.