KATH DACY 1926 -2025

Today I pay tribute to my ikebana friend and colleague Kath Dacy who died last Wednesday at the age of 98. Kath was a student of the late Norman Sparnon, as were many of Australia's early ikebana community. She also was a student of the late, highly regarded, Victorian teacher Ursula Breit. 

Kath was a qualified high school art teacher before she was introduced to the art of ikebana, which became a lifelong passion for her. She served as the Deputy Director of the Victorian Branch of the Sogetsu School in 1993 and 1994, and as the Director in 1995 and 1996.

Like many of her peers, Kath was drawn to the bold, modern feeling of strength, as well as beauty, in ikebana. I cannot date this photograph but think it might be the 1980's.

I first met Kath in the early 2000's when I joined the Victorian Branch as a recently qualified Sogetsu teacher. We got to know each other over time as she occasionally spent the weekend at a holiday house nearby in Torquay.

This photo shows Kath working on her floor-based ikebana arrangement at the Victorian Branch's 50th anniversary exhibition in Federation Square 2014.

Again at the 50th anniversary exhibition preparations. 

I always enjoyed discussing ikebana with Kath. Her perspective on ikebana seemed to me to be profoundly influenced by her training and her practice as an art teacher. I feel enriched by her insights and analysis of ikebana.

Kath died at ninety eight; a long life committed to education and the enjoyment and creation of things of beauty. Although her body became frail, ikebana was always an inspiration for her.

This photo is of her Ikebana at the Sogetsu School's Victorian Branch exhibition in 2013 at the Malvern Artists' Society Gallery.

Vale Kath, and thank you. 

Christopher

12th July 2025

SMALL WINTER IKEBANA ARRANGEMENTS

As an Ikebana practitioner I have a particular appreciation of the conditions in winter where I live. The climate of the southern coastline of mainland Australia is 'Mediterranean'. That means hot dry summers and cold wet winters. It means there is still plenty of green to be seen during winter. This is particularly because Australia is blessed with native evergreen trees being the rule, rather than the exception. 

Here is an interesting example in this photograph I took in the Royal Botanical Gardens Melbourne this morning. In the foreground, deciduous trees from China and North Asia in their autumn colour, while in the background are Australian evergreen eucalyptus trees. 

To ikebana.

On Saturday, Ikebana international Melbourne Chapter held a workshop which I was unable to attend. The guest presenter's topic was 'The Way of Tea'. It reminded me of some ikebana that I had seen in 2023 when I participated in an 'Art, Architecture and History Tour' in Japan. 

The following two photos are of some ikebana I saw arranged in a traditional tokonoma, the display alcove of a traditional formal Japanese room.

This ikebana was in a National Trust of Japan property in Tokyo, built for Mr Yoshisaburo Fujita.

I photographed this small ikebana in a hanging vase in one of the houses in the Samurai district in Kanazawa.

I was prompted to make this very simple ikebana arrangement.  I have used two leaves of an unidentified ground lily (I think) and a small sprig of Brushfields yellow Camellia with an opening bud. I have discovered that I have not catalogued the vase and will have to go back to my paper records.

To make today's ikebana ...

...I gathered a single small branch of Manchurian pear Pyrus ussuriensis, from the garden of our apartment, with which I created a late-autumn, early-winter ikebana arrangement. The Manchurian pear is growing in a very sheltered position. So it still has quite a lot of green leaves, despite it being early July. I gathered the spent seedheads of some Dietes for their slightly nutty brown colour, and also the feeling of late autumn that they provide. The bottle-shaped vase is by Jamie Beeston.

Greetings from Christopher

6th June 2025

IN A SHALLOW VESSEL WITHOUT A KENZAN

 

In this part of the world, it is most distinctly winter in spite of the bright sunshine seen in the photograph below

The large expance of white water is an indication of the strong prevailing winds from the south west, bringing cold weather at this time of year.

A couple of days ago, the bright early morning sunshine created a rainbow in the misty rain. Because the sun was low, the rainbow stretched from horizon to horizon. Unfortunately, I could not capture that in this photo.

Also, during last week, Laurie and I were delighted to come across this male Gang-gang cockatoo feeding on a shrub in a neighbours front garden. These are delightful parrots. I am always amazed that they are so unperturbed by the presence of humans, looking at them and taking photographs at close range.

Last Monday, the Victorian branch of the Sogetsu school held workshop, which was led by Emily Karanikolopoulos. The subject of the workshop was an arrangement in a suiban without a Kenzan. This style of arrangement shifts the focal point of the botanical materials to higher in the arrangement. It also emphasises the space in the suiban, as well as the surface of the water.

I was not able to attend the workshop because my right arm is recently out of plaster and still quite weak. This means that I cannot manipulate materials satisfactorily. At present, I am also unable to drive. I decided that although I could not attend the meeting, I would try to make a small version of the arrangement. It is one of my favourite exercises and can look simple and elegant. It is particularly good exercise with winter branches. 

I had pruned some small branches from my Japanese flowering quince Chaenomeles bush which I decided to use in a shallow bowl-shaped vessel. I hadn't stopped to think that this shallow bowl made the exercise all the harder because it has no walls to help stabilise the materials. However, I persisted and I was happy with the final result. The two single-red Camellia flowers are quite complimentary to the Japanese flowering quince branches. I am hoping over the next few weeks that these branches will develop flowers if I keep them in water. 

This is how the base of the stems looked sitting within the shallow bowl, made by the Victorian ceramicist, Phil Elson.

I made an additional arrangement that was inspired by a single piece of grey bark, which I noticed as we were walking in the nearby park, a couple of days ago. The inside of this bark is a lovely warm nutty brown colour. For a focal point I have used a single stem of ornamental grape vine with three small pink leaves. I have used the vase made by, and given to me by Janet Keefe, a ceramicist and long-term Ikebana practitioner when I was in Canada recently.

Greetings from Christopher
29th June 2025

HOME AGAIN

We are now home again from our holiday and settling back into Torquay. The weather has been quite cold with maximums in the low teens and down to 3 degrees centigrade overnight recently.

However, there has been some very bright sunshine at times. The Front Beach looked particularly cheery on Friday, even though the the air was cold. Of course what we really need is more rain. It has been disturbingly dry in the south of Australia for the last eighteen months or more.

In spite of the dryness, the three small Camellias I have in pots are doing well.

The Kamo-honnami has a number of flower buds this year. But the bush is still very small and I have to be rather strategic about cutting flowers. I was very interested to come across an article about this flower on the website of the International Camellia Register and recommend it to you.

In the garden in Melbourne is a large bush of a much more showy Camellia, whose name I do not know. As I was running short of time to write this post I decided to make a simple one-material ikebana with this Camellia.

I have arranged two, partially stripped, leafy stems with a single cup-shaped flower that had only just opened. The irregular disk-shaped vase is relatively flat, front to back. Fortunately I was able to choose stems that lent themselves to this lateral placement.

Greetings from Christopher  
 22nd June 2025

FAREWELL TO OTTAWA

Our hosts in Ottawa are my ikebana friend, Leonora, and her husband Richard. 

Last weekend they took us to Québec city. In the photo with Laurie, we were at old restaurant where we had our first light lunch to recover from the bus journey. I was extremely surprised to find that old Québec was a small intact walled European style city, established about 400 years ago.

Towering over the lower city are the walls of the upper city, dominated in this view by the hotel Fairmont Chateau Frontenac. Leonora and I are in the foreground.

This street in the lower city, with a canopy of open umbrellas, looked quite whimsical and charming.

The first part of this very large hotel was opened in 1893 and has been extended on three occasions. It has 610 rooms. This view from the Dufferin Terrace gives an excellent idea of the current size of the building. The chain of chateau-style hotels was established by the Canadian Pacific Railway. It was created because revenue from passengers contributed significantly to the railway's profitability, and travellers needed somewhere to stay.

An earlier building of particular interest to Laurie is what is now the Morrin Centre. What you see was first built in 1808 on the site of the previous French barracks (and sometime prison) of 1712.  From 1808 until 1867 the building was the public prison of the city. It then became Morrin College, the first centre of higher education in the province that conducted its teaching in English. In 1868, the Literary and Historical Society moved its library into the building.

The English Library at the Morrin Centre is a key location in a novel by the Canadian detective novel writer Louise Penny entitled "Bury Your Dead". Laurie was interested in the parallels between this Victorian period institution and Melbourne's Athenaeum Library.

Like all cities, Ottawa has plenty of wildlife. 

None the less, I was quite surprised to see this Canada goose sitting on a clutch of eggs in the ornamental garden of a restaurant terrace. It was within arms reach from the nearest table. 

A week later, we found the goose had gone. However, we then spied the only surviving chick in the canal, being very closely supervised by both of the parents.

The weather has warmed up significantly since we arrived two weeks ago. Flowers are now in abundance. In particular I have noticed there are large quantities of Peonies in the gardens that we have visited. 

This mass of Peonies was in the Central Experimental Garden near the Arboretum in Ottawa.

These pennies are in the garden of my ikebana friend, and ceramicist Janet Keefe.

On the right Janet, in her garden, with fellow ikebanist, Gail.

Now to ikebana

The first two photos are from Hokaido.

Andy made this slanting nageire ikebana with unidentified variegated branch material, and yellow Tulips.

Aileen made this freestyle ikebana in her newly-acquired modern basket. She has used tulip leaves and stems (without the flowers) and Japanese Lantern Alkekengi oficinarum seed pods.

My own modest Ikebana is a cluster of pink Alstroemeria placed in a small vase. The stem of the flower cluster sits on one edge of the vase mouth creating an open space above the rim. This gives a feeling of lightness to the placement. The vase has a dark brown band on the visible surface. Only a small amount of this colour is seen on the reverse side.

The vase was a gift from its maker, Janet Keefe.

Greetings from Christopher

15th June 2025

 

HOSTA and ALSTROMERIA

This week Roadside Ikebana comes to you from Ottawa. 

One of the famous features of Ottawa is the Rideau Canal which has its northern end in the city. The first of 46 locks is situated between the Parliament buildings and the Chateau Laurier (on the left in the photo). The canal links the Ottawa river, with Lake Ontario, via the Rideau River and the Cataraqui River. The photo shows the lowest lock in this section of the canal.

A short distance away is a bluff overlooking the river, where I came across a planting of materials that are indigenous to the area. The photo above shows a beautiful plant, Prairie Smoke Geum triflorum, which is just turning to seed.

Near by I was delighted to see this extraordinary sculpture which I first saw on our visit in 2014. It is called 'One Hundred Foot Line' and is by the American sculptor Roxy Paine. The artist used the natural growth patterns of trees as his inspiration and model for sculptures in this series.

Below some further ikebana from Hokkaido.

In a tsubo vessel, Eleanor made this ikebana using vine as the principal subject, with some  small Cypress branches and a single yellow Chrysanthemum.

Also, using a tsubo vessel, Aileen made this arrangement with some tall strap-like leaves, a large spider Chrysanthemum with a pinkish centre and some variegated Hosta leaves.

In Ottawa, we visited our friends Leonora and Richard. Leonora organised a gathering of ikebana practitioners for afternoon tea, and conversation about our shared passion. I gave a small demonstration of one ikebana arrangement. Being very limited in the use of my right hand, I was assisted by George.

Among the company were Gail and Wendy.

The material in the ikebana included two Hosta leaves and two stems of Alstroemeria flowers. The higher leaf shows the underside only, and the lower leaf is showing its upper surface. The main mass of the Alstroemeria is situated between the leaves with a couple of flowers below.

Greetings from Christopher

8th June 2025
 

FAREWELL TO HOKKAIDO

In Hokkaido we caught this view of Mt Yōtei, in the distance across Lake Tōya, a crater lake to the south of Niseko Hirafu, We had travelled there the day before our departure to Canada. 

In Canada the first city we visited was Toronto where we previously had a brief stay in 2018. That earlier visit left us keen to return to see more of the cultural life of the city. 

I was pleased that we were able to visit the Gardiner (ceramics) Museum. We also visited the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario. We were also able to attend a short evening recital at ROM as well as attending a Beethoven concert with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. 

This photo shows Laurie in front of a large concave-fronted building, which made the reflection of the flat-fronted building on the opposite side of the road appear convex.

On our second last day in Toronto, we took a ferry out to a small group of very low offshore islands in Lake Ontario, which were formed from sandbars. Since I was 8 years old I have lived on the southern sea coast of Victoria. I find it very strange to think that this huge body of water that disappears over the horizon is all fresh water.

It was delightful to walk in a less crowded place and in nature's greenery. The photo above shows a large flock of Canada geese with quite a number of goslings. The small fry seem to be being protected by all of the adults, not just the individual parents.

The islands are very low to the water level, but are able to support some large and obviously very old trees like the huge willow behind me in the photo.

The view of the city made a striking contrast from the island.  The Toronto skyline is dominated by the enormous CN Tower. 

The following ikebana photos were made with purchased materials, supplemented with others foraged from around Niseko Hirafu a couple of weeks ago. 

Eleanor used two New Zealand Flax leaves Phormium and Wintercress Barbarea vulgaris in a shallow trough.

Andy arranged Narcissus and a large unidentified leaf in a tall footed vessel.

  

In a shallow trough, Aileen arranged Indian hellebore Veratrum viride as a receding mass, with a single yellow tulip.

 

While foraging for wild materials I came across an unidentified vine.

The vine is the principle subject of my ikebana which I arranged in a tsubo, spherical vessel. I added an unknown green branch material, pink flowers and two white tulips.

The arrangement met the criteria for the Sogetsu curriculum exercise, as one to be 'seen from all angles'. Such an ikebana needs to present a different appearance from each angle.

Greetings from Christopher

1st June 2025