20 Jan Wednesday…with frosty Ikebana

The snow from the weekend has melted, but the frost has set in this week, which is something I don’t mind at all if it doesn’t kill the echiums and the sun is shining…I love how the whites of snow and frost are actually often some sort of blue depending on the light…
I cycled up to the Ditchling Beacon this morning and although I’ve done it loads of times this morning was so beautiful in it’s coldness… ( this is me looking like a Victorian postman on some sort of penny farthing! ) I cycled on to Stanmer Park nearby as it was all too nice to rush back the normal route… When I got back I felt really inspired by how I found it so beautiful even though there’s a lack of bright colour at the moment…just loads of twigs, blueness and a sense of structure…

So, it’s actually a perfect time of year for an Ikebana arrangement as there’s so much form and simplicity out there at the moment, with just those little pops of otherness…
I wanted the arrangement to reflect my bike ride in some way, so went into my garden to try and find things which I thought may be able to capture some sense of that… ( I also had a little black and white experiment inspired by Karl Blossfeld…this is a direct link, but if you Google him with ‘images’ you’ll get his incredible photos en masse! ) Choosing the ikebana vessel is important…Holly Bell made me these 2 light ones for Christmas, and I wanted to use them, but I thought this arrangement would probably work better with a larger base… You have to start somewhere, and I love this common hogweed seed head which I’d picked even though it was the last one left… but it didn’t really work…

I wanted to reflect the landscape more…

…so it disappeared! I wanted to create a sense of the cycling; the wind in my face, everything going past so quickly and glances into the hedgerows… …and I just added a hint of Spring as it was definitely lurking out there this morning even in an underground sort of way… …and these are the leftovers!

I’ll be running a short Ikebana style workshop in a couple of weekends time at Arlo & Jacob in London, in which I’ll demonstrate and also give some firm ideas and starting points on how to create your own arrangements similar to this one…a sort of story telling though simplicity and the frugal sense of season, with a definite sense of place and relevance .

There’s more information about here and in a blog post here, and if you’d like to book a place you’ll be able to here.

I’ll be bringing all the ikebana ceramics, flowers and twigs, and there’ll be free coffee, cake… and popcorn ( I’m obsessed with popcorn at the moment! ) and we’ll be able to look at the photography aspect too once you’ve created your pieces.

( You can see a Steller story here which has lots of pictures of the space where the workshop will be held )