COLOUR HARMONY

In the garden autumn colouring is evident in some of the northern hemisphere plants...

...such as this Japanese Ivy Parthenocissus tricuspidata (also known as Boston Ivy). Our soil, climate and proximity to the sea (300 metres away) are not very suitable to many of the deciduous plants that colour well in autumn.

However, this Australian native, Banksia ericifolia is doing well and flowers beautifully in this season through to winter.  

The hook-shaped styles of the inflorescence are orange and give a rich colouring to the yellow tepals.

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This week, in my Geelong class, I had set the senior students the exercise of making an "Autumn ikebana, focusing on leaf colour". 

Ellie created a nageire ikebana, which requires a tall vase. She used a strong, slanting branch of yellow-orange leaves for the principal line and orange-centred yellow chrysanthemums as a textural contrast.

Maureen used two branches of Manchurian pear Pyrus ussuriensis in an unusual flat-topped ikebana vase with a well for the kenzan. She deliberately removed some leaves from the bottom of the branches to show the newly formed flower buds. A small stem of Ginko leaves provides some lighter colour at the centre of the arrangement.

Tess set two curving stem lines of "Beurre Bosc", an old Belgian variety of Pyrus communis, with red leaves. The green leaves at the mouth of the vase are lilac Syringa. Unfortunately, the flattening effect of the photograph conceals the fact that the righthand line curves forward. The vase is from one of the Bizen kilns.

Jo's exercise was to make an ikebana that can hang on a wall. As a frame-work she used a structure she had made last year from thin stems. The green leaves are Agapanthus and the orange flowers, Clivias.

 

My Melbourne students also had individual exercises.

Marisha's exercise was to make an ikebana "Using leaves only". In this case, dried Aspidistra, cut-leaf Maple, variegated Bromeliad and fallen Crepe Myrtle leaves.  She also used her long lasting "Ozaka" leaves (botanical name unknown). Marisha decided to set the leaves in a glass vase to create this flowing line design.

Jacqueline's exercise was to use unconventional (man-made) material in her ikebana; in this case, wire netting. She first moulded the netting into a cone shape and then fixed it into the spherical vessel so that it issued from one of the two openings. A single stem of Jasmine vine, Jasminum officinale, is supported by the netting and three small Camellia flowers provide colour highlights. 

The maroon ceramic vase was used to give height, so that the vine did not touch the table surface.

My ikebana this week is made using Hydrangea flowers that I picked two weeks ago.

I was interested to notice how well they had dried with no wilting and very little shrivelling. Their colour change was also fascinating. The red had become maroon and the pale green parts had developed into a matt blue-green.

When I placed the vase on the sideboard I noticed the close harmony between the petal's grey-green and the celadon platter behind them. I photographed them against a white backdrop for clarity of this image. I added a small bare branch from the apricot tree as a contrasting element.

The celadon platter is by the Adelaide ceramicist Dawn Slade-Faull (1927-1987). The white, domed vase is by the Tasmanian ceramicist Sallee Warner.

Greetings from Christopher

7th May 2023