On a visit to a friend in Florida Mario found that she was making beaded flowers. He became fascinated by this once popular kitchen-table hobby. He would buy old beaded flowers in shops and flea markets and rework them into his own designs. He bought every kind of bead, he used bits of jewels,  glitter, spray paints, and other materials to create large flowers, each completely unique, most with subsidiary stems with smaller flowers, buds, or leaves. Mario made beaded flowers for 25 or 30 years, selling them to individuals or through high end stores and galleries. At one point he was having leaves made in China, but he stopped, saying, “if it’s a Mario Rivoli flower, I have to make all of it.” Friends worried that someone might have the flowers copied and manufactured in China, but Mario said “They can copy any particular one, but every one I make is different.” Twice a year, on his visits to New York, Mario would spend a few hours at Julie’s Artisans Gallery “fluffing” his flowers – rearranging and refreshing their appearance. He’d do this if he visited you, and you had an arrangement. Friends urged him to tag the flowers with his signature, but he wouldn’t…he felt that the flowers identified themselves as his work.