
Max van de Sluis
Freelance Flower Design

Flowers and I are one, I can’t imagine life without flowers. I grew up amongst flowers and nature and always knew that they would be my future. It started very early in my childhood making small bouquets from the broken and leftover flowers from my father’s nursery and my mother’s flower shop, I spent a lot of my time during that period in there and enjoyed it greatly.
Logic; So it was, later on, a logical choice for me to study flower design. During that period I needed some experience from experienced florists so I went to Ton Lemmens. He opened my eyes to what was possible with flowers, showed me a completely new world and trained me to think in an open and free way. Complete; I had always known that when you want to get somewhere you should know as much as possible, so I went to another great flower designer, Joseph Verreycke, and worked there for two years. I learnt lots of classical designs and old techniques, a great foundation and still today I use a lot of these ideas they taught me.
Dreams; I followed my inner feeling and dreams and after my second place in 1999 in the Euro Cup I got the chance to go abroad giving flower demonstrations and teaching, I loved and still love it: it gives me the chance to travel over the world and share my ideas and my views on flower design with many people, I see and meet amazing people everywhere with the same interest and that makes life rich and wonderful - thanks for that.
Next step; When I reached third place in the World Cup 2002 I started to work together in Life 3 with Per Benjamin from Sweden and Tomas de Bruyne from Belgium. We expanded our demonstrations and teaching but we also developed new angles related to flower design. I started to design and building stands for ( flower) fairs, decorating show rooms, designing products and doing crazy projects and decorations, sometimes it seems there are no limits; it is wonderful to see how you grow over the years.
Experience
1997 - Started Flower shop Zeeland (The Netherlands)
1998 - Started to Give Demonstrations and Teaching in many European countries, USA, Far East and New Zealand
1998 - Started with product development. Has, ever since, worked for companies from Europe and the USA
2000 - Exhibition: Mobach potten bakkers Utrecht
2000 - Show Demonstration iflo Germany 2000 - Teaching and professional Demonstrations, Taiwan
2001 - Decorate New Years concert, Mariinski Theatre Moscow
2002 - Member of Life 3
2003 - Demonstrations all around the world
2004 - Assistant to the German participant in the World Cup in Melbourne (Australia). Starting designing and building booths for the flower industry. 2005 - Demonstrations Europe, Asia and USA
Designer Info
Country | Netherlands |
Phonenumbers |
Titles
Masterflorist
Expertise
Demonstrations
Workshops
Seminars,
School teaching,
Shop make-overs,
Economy and sales knowledge,
Team and leaderships courses
Shop coaching,
Big events
Party decorations
Spoken Languages
Awards
Publications
Magazines
2003-2009 De Pook (floral magazine)
2005-2006 De Telegraaf (monthly)
Books
2003 Emotions by Life3 - Stichting Kunstboek Publischers
2005 Wedding Emotions by Life3 - Stichting Kunstboek Publischers
2005 Annual 05-06 | 06-07 | 07-08 - Stichting Kunstboek Publishers
2007 X-mass Emotions by Life3 - Stichting Kunstboek, Publischers, 2007
2010 Passionate Emotions by Life3 – Stichting Kunsboek Publischers