On Monday two weeks ago, the Sogetsu Branch workshop was led by Helen Quarrell. The theme she chose was 'miniature ikebana'. This is a concept that was developed by the Sogetsu School's second Iemoto, Kasumi Teshigahara.
Her idea was that by using very small vessels the ikebanist would arrange botanical elements, rather than make arrangements in the traditional sense. The elements could be a single leaf, flower, seed-pod, stem or even just a part of one of these. In one of her examples the Iemoto used a single stamen from a flower. In this way miniature ikebana shares ideas with the curriculum exercise of 'Deconstruction and re-arrangement'.
These two photos show Helen's demonstration examples at the workshop. The 'arrangement' aspect of the exercise comes from the considered placement of the materials on a board, platter or cloth, on which the work is set. Helen made the observation that this is an interesting way of making ikebana when the physical space is very limited.
This is my example arranged on a cloth base provided by my colleague Barbara. I had left my lacquered stand behind and had to improvise. One of the delights of this exercise is choosing little objects as vessels that are not thought of as 'vases' and also may have special meaning to the ikebanist. My vessels included two sake cups, a box, a test-tube, an ornamental bottle cap, a serviette ring and small ceramic vessels that were given to me by friends.
This link will take you to more photos from the workshop. Emily Karanikolopoulos also has some lovely photos on her blog: Emily in Tokyo.
Greetings from Christopher
13th April 2019
I periodically make mini arrangements to place by my kitchen sink to enjoy while doing the dishes. I loved seeing all these mini arrangements and all the interesting containers used for this workshop. Thanks for sharing this interesting and fun workshop.
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