ROSES, LEAVES and HAIKU

Last week I posted a photo of an arrangement in which I had braced a branch within the 'ikebana niche' in our living room. This meant it was supported and did not need to be in the vessel I was using. 

Subsequently I received an email from my New York-based Sogetsu friend, Lynn, who had seen the same idea in an internal restaurant window. In that case,  they had used an espaliered grape vine cutting. The glass vessel seems to contain river stones at the bottom, then finer gravel or sand. I would have preferred just water, with perhaps a leaf floating on the surface. However, it makes a rather striking winter arrangement.


At a class late last year, Elizabeth set as an exercise 'an arrangement using leaves and roses only'. My very imaginative colleague Toula Karanikolopoulos made the work below using New Zealand flax leaves and roses from her garden in a vessel she had made herself. 



In contrast my arrangement is fairly naturalistic and I used dietes leaves with some small pink roses I bought from the florist. The vessel is by the Castlemaine-based ceramic artist Tom Cockram.


On Tuesday 9th February the Melbourne Chapter of Ikebana International held its first meeting for 2016. The focus was a presentation by three members whose work was represented in the book 'Poetical Ikebana', including on the front cover of the book. Click on the blue text to see the I.I. blog posting for that meeting: Haiku * .

Greetings from Christopher
21st February 2016.

No comments:

Post a Comment