Recently, I have been concentrating my ikebana studies doing "formative" creations. That is to say, the works were designed to form a certain shape that I had envisioned. I took apart leaves from branches and put them together again!

This time, after looking at the branches available, I decided that a "natural" style of arrangement would be better. I had 2 kinds of branches--alder and an unknown one with little black berries (Does anyone know?) and two kinds of mum--yellow cremon and green pom-pom.

I chose a wide suiban container because I wanted to show the height of the branches. First I put together the skeletal frame of branches. Next, where to put the flowers? I wanted to keep the focal point of the arrangement up top so that's where the flower went. At the same time, I showed a clean base (notice that the branches seem to sprout up from one origin as opposed to being all over the place) leaving it stark in order to further emphasize the top focal point. I removed all the leaves from the mums except for the 2 leaves of the cremon in front. By doing away with the leaves, the slender lines of the pom-pom mums could be clearly seen, adding flavour to the arrangement. Lastly, I created some space by adding that branch on the left. It helped give the arrangement a sense of motion... to prevent it from looking like it was only sitting idly on the vase!

I hope you enjoyed this arrangement.

Miyako

See more of Miyako's work here.