Philadelphia Flower Show - Ikebana

  Ikebana is a Japanese style of flower arrangement with several schools. It is never judged, but is created for pure enjoyment.

Every time I think I understand something about one of the "schools," I find an arrangement that doesn't seem to fit the rules, despite its label.

Well, I THINK the Ohara school is supposed to have a shallow container and otherwise natural components. Here are three examples. I like the first one best.

And a more stylized one:

This one is labeled Ohara, but it does not have a low container, so as always in this art form, I'm confused.

I think my favorite school- of the ones I know anything at all about- is Sogetsu, which is kind of "anything goes." This is a large example.

I would have thought this was more Ohara, but I like it.

This was my favorite Sogetsu.

Just one more, from the Ichiyo school, because I like it too.

I got myself in gear and did quite a few things today that I am supposed to be doing, including a load of laundry dried outside in the sun. And I got the fencing around the rock garden. No walk of any length though. Cathy and I are going for a hike tomorrow.

See Ikebana 2023

Philadelphia Flower Show - Ikebana

  Every time I attend the Philadelphia Flower Show I come home with way more categories of pictures than I ever have time to share. Apparently, I've never blogged about the Ikebana flower arrangements before. Ikebana is a Japanese style of flower arrangement that is highly disciplined. The arrangements are supposed to all be based on an assymetrical triangle.

Here is one of my favorites from this year.

Within the art form there are several "schools." I never knew what the difference was, but we picked up a flyer with more information. I'm not even going to try to keep them straight in my head, particularly since I can't even look at these arrangements and figure out in which school they fit.

However, this next one has natural materials and no "sculpture" (is a vase a sculptural element?), so I think they must be in different schools. However, the green leaves in it are not leaves but are paper glued around the twigs. Maybe this is the modern school. However, the tag says it is the freestyle abstract school which uses objects of sculptural character, so maybe the paper leaves count? I think we can safely say that I don't know much about this topic.

Philadelphia Flower Show 2009 - II

 
I'm home! Really tired, but will do a post before I crash. Today I'll tell you about some of the more unusual displays. First is an entry in the Ikebana contest. Ikebana is a Japanese flower arranging style that is very disciplined. This one didn't really seem to me to fit the form, but it certainly is unusual!



There were a number of categories devoted to fashion- remember "Belle Italia!" I didn't take any pictures in some of the groups because I wasn't sure how my batteries would last. Now I wish I had taken at least one in each group to show you. There were shoes decorated with plant material. There was a long display case of jewelry made from plant material- I heard people who like jewelry saying that there were really nice pieces there, whereas the shoes were more whimsical. There were hats, that might conceivably be worn- most very stylish! There were dresses too, and they were certainly not something people would actually wear, they were just art. Here are two examples.



I liked the display where the next picture was taken. It was "Under the Sea." There were posters with mermaid or merman legends from around the world. These creatures were recreated with plant material. It was all lit in shimmering blue with a blue ceiling and floor, and decorated with shells, seaweed, etc so it all seemed to be underwater. The picture is of a sea-horse. Notice its tail instead of back legs!



Finally for today I'll show you a construction- again made from plant material. I never did figure out if these were some particular class of entries in the competition, but I liked this one, so that is its claim to fame.

	See Philadelphia Flower Show - I
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