BRISBANE WORKSHOPS: PART TWO

Last week I showed a photo of a Banksia ericifolia ikebana I had made, and I had mentioned the trimming I did to reveal the line in the ikebana. I thought later that I should have shown before and after photos of the process.

This clearly is "before", showing the quite bushy nature of the branch.

Now in this "after" photo the amount of trimming is revealed. The line is revealed and the space it makes between the flower head and the branch itself. Line is one of the three essential elements that are necessary for a well-constructed ikebana.

The first of the three exercises that were set for my recent Brisbane workshops was to make an ikebana in a suiban emphasising the water and incorporating stone. At the time of setting the exercise I could not remember where I had first come across the idea of including stone in ikebana.

Today I searched my ikebana library and found this book that I bought in Japan in 1992. It was first published in 1970. Ikebana's past has many treasures, and much to teach us.

This was my demonstration example. I selected these two stones from the garden of Wendy Hoskin, the Director of Sogetsu Ikebana Queensland. The black stones, which have white quartz veins, are apparently characteristic of the Brisbane area. The first thing I found preparing this ikebana was that the stone on the right was too big to be in the suiban. When I placed it there it dominated the space making it look congested. As you can see my solution was to use a smaller stone of the same kind placed instead, and to place the larger stone balanced on the rim of the vessel, thus extending the width of the ikebana.

The next exercise was to make an ikebana that extended into the space around the vessel. This was my first example. Although it is not obvious in the photograph I have used two matching tall vessels made of resin. The Strelitzia leaves and flower are clearly reaching to the left side rather than vertically above the vessels.

My second example is one of those things that evolved. I had hoped the branch we found in Wendy's garden could extend horizontally so that one of its side branches would reach down to the table surface to provide support. However, the material, which seemed to be a small self-seeded Morton Bay fig Ficus macrocarpa was not compliant to this idea. As much as I bent the branches, they "un-bent" themselves. Finally, I wired the terminal side branches together into interesting shapes and rested one branch on the top of the vase. I placed two small stems of red-flowering Camellias on top of a lens-shaped cage formed by the terminal stems.

 

The final exercise was to make an ikebana using three non-matching vases. This topic was first set by Thea Sartori for the Victorian Sogetsu Branch at our March workshop.

This is the ikebana I made at that time. I began by arranging the vases in a configuration with which I was satisfied. Then I added the materials linking them.

At the workshop last weekend I approached the exercise differently. This time I placed a back ceramic cube within a squat glass cylinder and placed an egg-shaped green glass vase partially behind the other two. I then added a small number of Australian native flowers and leaves to harmonise with the vases.

In doing this exercise the vases usually will become the dominant element. The Sogetsu School teaches us that in this situation the botanical materials should be secondary.

At the end of the second day we might have been tired but we were still able to smile. 

Thank you to my hosts, including those behind the scene who helped to make the workshops a success.

Greetings from Christopher

17th June 2023