TWO VESSELS, ONE ARRANGEMENT

A couple of weeks ago I set my Melbourne students the exercise of making an ikebana arrangement in which the vessel is the principal subject. When I was a student this exercise was called "Emphasising the container". It arises from one of the 50 principles of ikebana developed by Sofu Teshigahara. In such a situation the flowers and branches play a secondary role to the vessel. To my surprise last week I discovered that I had not included the work of two of the students. 

Eugenia used an irregular donut-shaped vessel with fold lines that create a sense of movement. She has used curving dried acacia stems to complement the form and a small floral focus of Grevillea.
  

Margaret used a large flattened bowl-shaped ikebana vessel from Japan. The vessel is quite narrow from the front to back and a challenge to use. She deliberately placed her materials so as to keep the front surface of the vessel uninterrupted. The branch of driftwood and the pincushion proteas provided a textural contrast.

Last week I attended the Sogetsu Branch workshop that was given by my teacher Elizabeth Angell. She chose as her theme: Two Vessels, One Arrangement, and encouraged members to use non-matching vessels. 

When I attended her class later in the week she had made the arrangement above using five green glass bottles. Of course this is a variation on the principle of her workshop theme. She has supported a dried magnolia branch across the bottles and created three small floral foci. It is important to point out that the bottles are set out in irregular triangles and that two of them do not have any materials in them.

From my bathroom window I can see this Bushy Yate, Eucalyptus lehmannii, that has recently started to flower. In the photo above the flower is the greenish-yellow mop of stamens. To the lower right is the developing seed pod of a finished flower. On the above link is also a photo of the flowers in 'bud' before the flower caps have fallen off. 

This is one of my (many) favourite plants in our garden. Its buds, flowers and seed pods are all unusual and have great sculptural qualities. I thought this material would make an interesting subject for the Sogetsu Branch workshop. 

For my two non-matching vessels I chose a matt-black vessel with a gold and silver leaf decoration and a lustre-glazed bowl. Although different in form and surface treatment they were both made by Greg Daly. I have separated the flowers on their stems from a massed group of seed pods and reversed their colours with respect to the vessels. The black vessel has the lighter coloured flower and the predominately yellow bowl has the dark brown seed pods. At this time of the year when the seed pods are just developing they have a beautiful almost lacquered  appearance.

There are more photos from the workshop via this link.

Greetings from Christopher

23rd November 2019.

THE AREA AROUND THE VESSEL...

A couple of weeks ago I was rather surprised to come across this cricket match in progress on a nearby oval. 

It immediately took me back to the sight, some years ago, of cricket being played on a village common in Guilford, Surrey UK. 

The match, on our local oval, was being watched by family groups and left me with a comforting sense of the small, supportive community in which we live.

Subsequently, Laurie and I walked in Iron Bark Basin again and enjoyed the Spring wild-flowers that were quite abundant after some recent rain. The small Blue Pincushion flower is Brunonia australis, and was particularly abundant... 

...as was this Button Everlasting Coronidium scorpioides.

Another favourite of mine is this Grass Trigger Plant Stylidium graminifolium, which has a curious trigger mechanism (click on the link then scroll down to the video) that assists in the pollination process.

And so, on to ikebana and the work of my Geelong class.

 

Maree created a Variation No 4 slanting, nageire arrangement, using eucalyptus branches and some South African protea, pincushion flowers. These flowers are in the same family, Proteaceae, as Australian native Grevillea, Banksia and Hakea plants.

I set my senior students the task of making an ikebana arrangement that 'Incorporates the area around the vessel'.

Helen used a long stem of Smoke bush Cotinus coggygria that had many leaves removed to show the line of the branch.  

Ellie used two graceful stems of honeysuckle that stretched across the open space of her stemmed bowl and then well beyond.

Maureen used stems of grape vine with a strong focal point of two Waratah Telopea speciosissima, flowers. 

I noticed that all these images show the principal branch extending to the right. This is not a requirement of the exercise.

Above is an example I made at a workshop with Mr Kawana some years ago. However, the exercise on that occasion was quite different. It was to make a simplified arrangement. Mr Kawana pushed us to refine and refine the work until it was reduced to the minimum number of elements. I have used the dried leaf of a Dracaena, the tip is in the vase and the other end is where it attaches to the branch.

Mr Kawana thought it could be simplified further so that there is only one element showing: that is the point of attachment to the branch, which was quite interesting and attractive. Of course, this is a classroom exercise directed at extending the student's thinking processes, as distinct from making a beautiful ikebana arrangement.
The ash-glazed vase is by the Australian potter Ian Jones.

Greetings from Christopher
17th November 2019

YELLOW SPRING FLOWERS

At class last week I set some of my students the exercise of making an ikebana arrangement in which the vessel is the principal subject. This comes from the principles developed by Sofu Teshigahara, founder of the Sogetsu School. He wrote, "...if the container is the main focus, then the flowers should be secondary to it...'. 

I think the challenge in this exercise is to make an interesting and attractive, but modest, ikebana that accentuates the vessel being used.

Julie used a small gourd-shaped vessel with a particularly interesting under-glaze design. The design is an ancient map of the islands of Japan, with the domains marked out. Her materials were a single bare line of tortuous willow and part of a pale pink hydrangea flower-head.

Marcia chose a very unusual glass vessel with a curving form. Its shape was emphasised by a black line that ran from the large opening at the top to the finer opening at the other end. The material she used is a single leaf of New Zealand Flax. This has been split into several lines for half its length. As the leaf was inserted into the vessel it was twisted, resulting in multiple curving lines accentuating the form.

At a class with my teacher Elizabeth the exercise was: 'An arrangement using a variety of materials'. An additional criteria was added that the materials should be spring flowers. I noticed that there were a number of yellow Australian native flowers blooming at that moment...

 ...including this small Everlasting Daisy, Chrysocephalum apiculatum that is growing well in our garden.

This tight little bunch of flowers are all on the one stem.

I thought that using a variety of small yellow flowers would work well in a brightly coloured lustre-glazed bowl by Greg Daly. 

Then I realised that a little zing of red would give the ikebana a lift. The red flowers are Freesia laxa which like moist conditions, and therefore don't grow in our garden.

This 3/4 side view gives a sense of the forward reach of the longest of the Billy Button, Craspedia, stems.

Today I also want to mention the exciting success of my colleague Emily Karanikolopoulos. In a collaborative working relationship, with the Victorian sculptor John Meade, they were successful in being awarded the Southern Way McClelland Commission in 2018. This is a commission for a public sculpture that is set along a section of the Southern Way freeway south-east of Melbourne. The sculpture was unveiled on 24th October and details are posted on  Emily's blog. I was delighted to be able to visit it on the following weekend. If you are in the vicinity some time in the next couple of years it is highly recommended. Congratulations to Emily and John.

Greetings from Christopher,
10th November 2019

CHANGING THE APPEARANCE OF MATERIALS

Two weeks ago, on Sunday the 20th of October, Ikebana International Melbourne Chapter was invited back to the Ripponlea Estate to exhibit ikebana to support the one-day Botanica Festival. When I visited the mansion on that day, my attention was caught by the 'stained glass' windows lighting the main staircase.

They had beautifully painted botanical motifs...

...as can be seen in this detail of the lower section of the central window. I thought it was particularly lovely to see ikebana in the context of a (rather grand) domestic setting; which is quite different from a gallery or other public space. 

The ikebana works had quite a different feel as they related to the various spaces.  Photos of the ikebana works, taken by Helen Marriott, can be seen on this link.

Meanwhile, back in Torquay, we are having bouts of summery weather with much cooler, sometimes rainy, days in between. The rain, when it comes, is welcome as the plants in the garden are in their main growing phase. 

A couple of weeks ago I noticed a single very tall Bird of Paradise Strelitzia Reginae, which I thought I should cut before it was damaged by the coming rain. It was the first to open in the garden this season and, at the time, the only one. What to do with a single flower? Then I thought, it needs leaves and they can be the 'subject' of my ikebana. The flower will simply be a focal point or foil. Only then did I really notice the unused bunch of small monstera deliciosa leaves left over from the I.I. exhibition four weeks earlier. One of them had just started to yellow, creating interesting colour variation, less flat than the rich green on the other leaves. 

This is my subject, four monstera leaves that I have 'squared off'. I remembered seeing this technique invented by Keith Stanley when, in 2011, he set himself the task of making a fresh ikebana arrangement every day for one year and posting them on his blog. Keith is a Sogetsu practitioner and floral designer in Washington DC.

My first Sogetsu teacher, Carlyne Patterson, would have called this changing the 'face' or 'appearance' of the material. This reveals one of the perspectives or attitudes of the Sogetsu School, in which botanical materials are treated as abstract three dimensional forms with certain textural and colour qualities that are used by the ikebana artist to achieve their design intentions.

Here is the profile view of the arrangement.

Here is the finished work with the focal flower added, which gives contrasting colour and a dynamic line. The grey suiban is from Seto City, just east of Nagoya where we spent four months in 1992 and where I took my first ikebana  lessons. Seto is one of the famous 'Six ancient kilns'. It was such an important centre of ceramic production in the past that the generic term for ceramics is setomono, or 'things from Seto'.

Greetings from Christopher
2nd November 2019