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| Our AVF headquarters on place Baleine |
Emiko “Kisaragi” Tomita, a visitor to Lyon and friend of an AVF
member, was offering to guide up to eight of us through an ikebana creation. Since I (Anna) have always been hopeless at
flower arranging, I jumped at the chance.
As a bonus for me, Kisaragi doesn’t speak French so the workshop was to
be totally in English!
Kisaragi is an ikebana pro and has studied the art of ikebana for over 10 years. She
started the session with a little history.
Ikebana was introduced into Japan by Buddhist priests around a
thousand years ago. There are actually
many, many styles of ikebana. She chose
a simple one for us and demonstrated creating an arrangement before she had us
give it a try.
Here’s what I learned…our ikebana arrangements were composed of
three stems, a longish one, a shorter one, and a very short one. They correspond to heaven, earth, and
rebirth. The actual arrangement should end up being a 3-dimentional triangle. To assist
in getting the proportions and placement correct, Kisaragi has created a framework of three half
circles. Absolutely brilliant! Using the pieces to measure the correct
length of each stem and place it in just the right spot, even I could create a
attractive ikebana arrangement!
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My ikebana arrangement at the workshop.
As you can see, I used two of the half circles in the arrangement.
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Right now, I have an arrangement on the mantle in the living room of our apartment. It’s lovely! Each morning I make sure it has water and
trim off the tired blossoms, and it still looks great. You can bet I’ll be
taking that framework home with me!
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