NARCISSUS

We passed the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere recently and I set my senior Melbourne and Geelong students the exercise of making an Ikebana incorporating white Narcissus. This is an important flower in Japan as it is one of the early plants to flower after the depths of winter. The traditional way of arranging Narcissus requires a good supply of leaves, which is a problem if you do not have a plentiful supply growing in your own garden. Unfortunately, commercially bought narcissus in Australia will usually have only one or two leaves, or none at all.

For this reason, I set the exercise as a freestyle ikebana so that the students could work with what was available to them.

In Geelong, Maureen made an ikebana with several different materials including some Narcissus in the centre of the work. Unfortunately my photograph does not do it justice. I have taken it from too high an angle, so that I could get the table top as a white background. In the process the interesting vessel, which is made from an old book, has lost much of its impact.

Christine used an unusual vessel made from seven connected bottle shapes. The long arching line of the unopened flower stem created a space beneath it and gave balance to her simple-looking ikebana.

This strong ikebana design was made by Ellie in a long narrow vessel that can be positioned as shown or on it long side. She used hidden techniques to arrange the leaves and flowers which are issuing from the vertical slit of the vessel.
 

In Melbourne, Marisha borrowed this footed vessel from my collection and arranged her Narcissus with some variegated Aspidistra given by fellow student Eugenia. The curving line of the leaves leads the eye up and down the ikebana.

Eugenia used an interesting octagonal vessel positioned on one of its sides. A bare branch with a single remaining leaf gives the ikebana a wintery appearance with a focus created by two bunches of Narcissus that cascade forward over the face of the vessel.

 

Jacqueline used a previously prepared cage of fine bamboo canes to provide an additional focus for her mass of narcissus that arises on a tall column of stems and leaves.

Marcia, who kindly provided some of the narcissus to her fellow students, created an unusual slanting ikebana. The straight stemmed flowers arise among the curving "windswept" lines of the leaves from her shallow vessel.

This week my own ikebana was inspired by some fading leaves from the Bird's Nest fern in the conservatory.

   

As I was removing the leaves I noticed the fine lines of the veins on the front of the leaves which had darkened while the rest of the leaf yellowed. 

The long slender shape of the leaves with slightly fluted edges is very attractive.

I arranged three leaves, one is hidden at the back from this angle. The colour focus high in the arrangement is Swan River pea Glastrolobium celsianum, and two rose hips from the 

Mr Lincoln rose. The shape of the leaves made them suitable for a vertical ikebana and allowed me to present the face of the leaves with their attractive colouring and texture. The vessel was made in 1932 by the Tasmanian ceramicist John Campbell and given to me by my sister-in-law.

Greetings from Christopher

30th July 2023