DISASSEMBLING and REARRANGING (BANKSIA)

Winter is definitely making itself felt with some rather low overnight temperatures. However, it is also the time for winter flowering plants to bloom, which lifts my spirit. 

I recently set my students the exercise of making ikebana using some strong dried branches and combining them with Camellias. Unfortunately, Pamela did not have access to the requested woody material. However, she decided to improvise with some dried twigs that she found.

She also wisely chose this glass vase that allowed the fine material to show well and not be overwhelmed by the vessel. The tall fine line is visible within the vase as well as above. It has been strengthened by the placement of an inverted branching stem that sits outside the vase. A single pale pink camellia provides a focal point that harmonises with the vase.

In the Geelong class...

...Maureen had a very large dried branch with a highly textured surface, and which was stable on the table surface. Some stems of Camellia including two flowers, leaves and some buds were placed tightly against the bulk of the wood. Their small vase was almost completely obscured behind the wood.

Christine set a small thick piece of a very contorted woody branch in a footed vessel. She then placed Camellia branches with small delicate pink flowers around the branch.

Ellie used a pair of matching cylindrical vessels across which she placed a branching piece of dried woody material. The wood was suspended showing its line and creating spaces within and around the ikebana. Although it is hard to tell from the photo the branch was arranged so that it did not actually touch the table. Two open flowers and two small buds provided a floral focus.

Maree also used two vessels that were connected by the woody material. The positioning of the wood allowed the space between the two vessels to be increased making the ikebana feel light in spite of the large vessels and woody material. Three stems of Camellia created a highlight in the middle of the arrangement.

My ikebana is the Sogetsu curriculum exercise of "Disassembling and Rearranging the Materials". This means cutting the material to separate the stems, flowers, leaves, seed pods, etc, from each other. I wanted the challenge of practising the exercise in a Nageire (tall) vessel. 

It is helpful when the material has some very distinctive components, as is the case with the Banksia marginata branch I cut from the garden.

This photo shows part of step one. I have stripped all the leaves from branches and removed some flowering inflorescences. I maintained their small stems for fixing purposes.

I also separated these two small inflorescence buds. 

When I looked at all the separated materials I decided to not use the leaves on this occasion and then considered how I might use the geometric forms that actually make up the  Banksia branches.

The vessel I chose has three openings. One at the top that I did not use, plus a small one high on the left side and a large one on the right side. My starting point for the structure was to invert two of the branches and interlock their finer side branches. The curves of the branches created a lens shape with their main branch extending below and above the lens. I stabilised the form by inserting an additional branch horizontally through both openings in the vase. The two small inflorescence buds were joined and placed on the left and three flowers were set on the right side against the vessel.

When such sculptural ikebana forms are made in this exercise, it is said that the nature of the original material should not immediately be obvious.

Greetings from Christopher.

26th July 2026