LARGE and SMALL IKEBANA (amended)

 

In the garden about two weeks ago, I was surprised and delighted to see this Bromeliad flower. 

I had been given small Bromeliad plants by my friend Shirley and my sister-in-law, Helen. Having placed several plants in the same section of the garden I am not completely sure  to whom I should attribute this flower. But my thanks go to both gardening friends. Although small, this inflorescence is spectacular with its bright pink and the blue tips that precede the opening of the flower. I have learnt that this an Aechea, a member of the Bromeliad family, from Venezuela and some of the Caribbean islands.

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In the class room for my Melbourne students, I had set a couple of exercises. Given the time of year, an Autumn Ikebana was a timely subject.

I always associate Autumn with leaves that change their colours with this season. This is a curious part of my cultural heritage given that much of my childhood reading was of stories set in the UK and Europe. Autumn leaves are not a phenomenon of  Australian native trees and they were conspicuously absent in the coastal environment of Torquay in my childhood. That aside, in Japan, with its distinct seasons, there are particular flowers, berries and colouring of leaves that signal autumn. 

Eugenia made her arrangement harmonise with the warm tones of her wooden nageire vessel; bare branches, dwarf Nandina domestica, and rust-red Chrysanthemums.

In a modern orange-red ikebana vessel, Margaret set a stem of Nandina domestica, carefully pruned, with a cluster of berries and a single flower of Camelia, Kamo-honnami  *  .

Marcia set red Siberian Dogwood, Cornus alba, stems of rose-hips, fading Sedum flowers and Crepe Myrtle, Lagerstromia. leaves

Marisha's exercise from the curriculum was to "Disassemble and re-arrange" her materials. She created this bold design using stems, leaves, buds and an open Lilium flower. 

Recently I was unexpectedly given some very heavy fruit- covered inflorescence stems by our neighbour, Polly. They were presented along with the confident assertion: "You could do something with these". I suppose it was equally a challenge and so it turned out to be. These stems, from a Kentia Palm Howea forsteriana, or possibly Howea belmoreana, were exceptionally heavy and I found I could only arrange them as they grew. And here is my justification for having a variety of vessels for ikebana. 

The large black vessel is by the Victorian ceramic artist Alistair Whyte. It had both the visual and physical mass to support the weight of the stem. I made a mass with short sections of the material in the mouth of the vessel and positioned a single long stem that ended in a point which allowed it to lightly touch the table surface and thus avoided looking heavy or worse, collapsing.

I made my final, rather small, ikebana using two of the variegated leaves of the Aechmea and the single flowering inflorescence from the garden. Here again is evidence of the value of having at least a small but varied range of vases for your ikebana practice.

Greetings from Christopher

29th May 2022

 

* Hon'ami, Kōetsu (further information. The person after whom this camellia is named)