Red Hook's Moss Boss Will Change How You See a Houseplant
The Moss Boss
of Red Hook
Inside the studio turning preserved moss into art, one bowl, one wall, one very stacked client list at a time.
We walked in expecting a plant shop with a cute name.
What we got instead was a full sensory ambush. Walls of pillow moss, sheet moss, reindeer moss, and mood moss in every shade of green a forest floor has ever produced, all soft to the touch and none of it needing a single drop of water to survive. It smells faintly like the woods after rain. It looks like something you should not be allowed to touch. You are absolutely allowed to touch it.
This is the studio of Adzi Jasari, known online and around the neighborhood simply as Moss Boss. We came for a moss bowl class. We left having interviewed a small business owner whose client list includes Saks Fifth Avenue and the US Open, and who still teaches beginner classes out of a Red Hook storefront three days a week.
It started in Scotland, by accident
Every good obsession starts somewhere unplanned. For Adzi, it was a trip to Scotland.
"I had just taken a trip to Scotland, then I fell in love with moss out in Scotland. I'd seen moss art before and for some reason I couldn't stop thinking about it."
The trip was in November. By December, Adzi was still thinking about it, on repeat, until there was nothing left to do but figure out how to make something. A friend suggested a craft fair. By the end of that first summer season in 2018, someone asked for a custom order.
"I was like, I got you. So that's how it started."
"I went in one hundred percent at 2020. It's been a journey, like being on a roller coaster. There's an emotional high, there's low lows and high highs, and you gotta ride it. You cannot get off."
Why Red Hook
Before the storefront on Van Brunt Street, Adzi was working out of a shared coworking space with sixteen tiny studio cubicles, paying around six hundred dollars a month for a corner to create in. The current space sat empty for months while Adzi drove past it nearly every day.
"Something was just like, give them a call. I called the realtor, I saw it, and I fell in love with the space. I was like, this is it."
"I really love Red Hook. It's kind of offbeat, a small little neighborhood, and everyone knows everybody. Everybody supports everybody."
What your moss bowl says about you
"I can see multiple personalities come out in people's creativity. I can tell who's very organized and diligent, and how they want things to look. But I can also see people who are just carefree, here for the experience, and don't care about it being perfect or mimicking my artwork."
For what it's worth, we will let you guess which category we fell into.
From craft fair booth to the US Open
Here is the part that genuinely surprised us. The same person hand placing sheet moss into a bowl on a Saturday afternoon has also built moss walls for offices, hotel lounges, and airport clubs up and down the coast. No sunlight, no water, no maintenance. Just moss, treated to stay soft and vibrant for years.
Installation photos courtesy of MossBoss NYC
What's next for Moss Boss
We asked Adzi the obvious question. What's next.
"To be honest, I don't know. This whole journey has been a learning experience for me. I try not to think too far ahead. Would I like another location? Yes. Am I scared? One hundred and ten percent."
"I'm just trying to stay present and make sure this is the best version of it before I expand. Tristate area, and then globally."
Book the class
Build Your Own Moss Bowl, taught by Adzi at the Red Hook studio. Ten spots per class, so book ahead.
Visit the studio
294 Van Brunt St, Brooklyn, NY 11231
Shop or request an installation
Follow along
@mossbossnyc on Instagram and TikTok
