Visiting The Studio of Sofu

When Sofu Teshigahara founded the Sogetsu School in 1926, it all started up in a small scale. After causing some turbulence in Japan in the 1930s for its non traditional style, nothing much happened until after World War II. Ikebana was a popular activity among the wives of US army soldiers stationed in Japan after the war, and they helped spread the practice of ikebana around the world.

The interest in Sogetsu ikebana seems to have exploded in those years. Sofu's book "Ikebana: Japanese Flower Arrangements", published in the early 1950s reports that the followers of his school exceeds 400000.

Although it looks a bit simple to the modern eye, this must have been an impressive book in it's time. I may be wrong, but to me it looks like some of the color photos are actually hand-coloured black and white photos. Hand-colouring of photographs was a popular techinique in Japan from the 1860s, and stayed popular long after it was concidered old fashioned in the West. You'll find many of the classic Sofu ikebana arrangements with comments in the book: Quite a few of Sofu's large scale sculptural ikebana with dried wood and stone, and a series of miniatyr ikebana "Pygmé flowers" in small vases and lipstick conatiner tops. There are also really nice interior pictures from the studio of Sofu and work in progress pictures showing Sofu in action. A whole series of photos shows a team of helpers constructing the large scale work "The Locomotive". It even has the sketches by Sofu's hands.

The wide range of ikebana arrangements and the photos from Sofu's studio is what makes this a true reference book. There is also a rich biographic presentation of Sofu's life and background written by art historian and art critic Sumio Mizusawa, telling the seldom told story about the father of Sofu who founded "Japan Floral Institute" and chocked the ikebana establishment by introducing a teaching technique with dial plates and fixed numbers of degrees for the positions of the flowers. Although Sofu emphasized the free expression and introduced the modern free style and avantgarde ikebana, he stuck to his fathers teaching methods for the basic styles. These methods are still in use by all the major ikebana schools.

It's difficult to find this book today. I've seen it listed with publication year varying from 1947 to 1954. It sometimes has a modernistic drawing and sometimes a photo of an ikebana arrangement on the dust jacket. In my opinion it's worth buying even in a less than perfect condition.

Ikebana: Japanese Flower Arrangements

by Sofu Teshigahara
With "Sofu Teshigahara - His Life And Art" by Sumio Mizusawa
Photo by Ken Domon
Studio Publications Inc, New York, undated, ca 1950-1952

Hardcover, 84 pages, colour and black and white photos.

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Sogetsu Surrealism

Today I finally found pictures of the surrealistic ikebana arrangements by Sofu Teshigahara that I promised to post. You'll find my last blog post on the subject through this link.

In the 1930s Sofu Teshigahara, founder of the Sogetsu school, started creating works that had references to contemporary western art. The first one I've come across is one of his most famous arrangements, named "The Locomotive". I'm posting it together with a Man Ray portrait of Marcel Duchamp, surrounded by some of his scrap metal sculptures in his New York studio in 1915. Sofu adds plant materials and brings the Duchamp reference into the ikebana tradition in an unexpected way.

The second work by Sofu that I would like to point towards is named "The Kyozo", which if I am correct refers to a storehouse for sutras. It's a mass arrangement made of drift wood and dried materials, devided into two separate parts. Sofu himself said about this arrangement: "I have intended to bring about a feeling of tension, or traction, between the two groups...".

This is one of my favorites. It invokes in me the dream landscape by Max Ernst in the painting "The Eye of Silence", 1943-44, which is a painting made in decalcomania technique. It has the same colour range and texture feeling as the avantgarde piece by Sofu. It even has a column of space through which you can see the sky.

"The Kyozo" also brings to live an old traditional style of ikebana that is rarely seen. The double shin Rikka has all the features of a classic Rikka arrangement, but like "The Kyozo" it has a split all the way through it. All the material used has to be neatly trimmed to give room for the column of space between the two parts created by the split.

I've found these works by Sofu in a book from the 1950s. I'm not sure when they where first conceived or what meenings they had to the artist. When looking at them I make my own interpretations.

Quotation from Sofu Teshigahara "Ikebana: Japanese Flower Arrangements" (undated, published in the 1950s).

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The Smell of Fall

Can you feel it - the earthy smell of wet leaves that fills the air when you walk through a park or enters the forest? Using autumn materials from the outdoors really gets me in a special mood. These are two eksamples of Kabu-Wake, arrangements with two groups, with focus on the space between the groups and on the water.

Free style Kabu-Wake: Fern and Asters.

Free style Kabu-Wake: Bamboo and Asters.

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Stealing Apples and Picking Berries

I've always been fascinated by apple trees. Maybe because it was to cold to grow apples were I was born - no apple stealing in my childhood. Still the thought of stealing apples takes me back to another time, another place. It must be something in our collective memory. I did pick a lot of berries though. Blueberries, raspberries and cloudberries. In a good year me and my sister and brother could pick enough to sell and earn some money. Those were the days. I still love the autumn, even though I don't pick my own berries anymore.

Autumn is special in ikebana too. The changes in nature are reflected in the choice of materials. It's a bit like bringing the outdoors indoors and living in the moment.

Stripped branches of Apple and Berberis.

Rowan and branches with black berries in a blue vase.

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Monkey Business The Ikebana Way

I've heard of ikebana classes for children, but never before have I seen a chimpanzee ikebana artist. The result is very Sogetsu School with modern lines and materials cut in untraditional ways. The best part is the end where the chimp corrects the work of the ikebana teacher.

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Five Elements: Water

I found a new video with ikebana artist Tetsunoru Kawana on YouTube. Remeber the guy that made the bamboo installation in The New York Botanical Garden last winter? This is from an installation work by Kawana earlier this year in Melbourne, Australia. Again - it's all bamboo and created with the help of local volontaires. This one is named "Five elements: Water".

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Hanging Flowers

Rowan and Allium.

Japanese Maple, Bergenia and Mustard flowers.

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Like a Prayer

To me, the name Issey Miyake means perfume and exclusive black clothes. To others he is more of a guarantee of good taste and style. In the foreword to the book "Inspired Flower Arrangemnets" by Toshiro Kawase, Issey Miyake confesses that he cannot recall ever once having been deeply moved by a flower exhibition, and that he prefers flowers growing wild in nature. Still his conception of art was transformed in the encounter with the tatehana (standing flowers) of Toshiro Kawase.

This is a beautiful book with large photos of flowers arranged in japanese antique containers from temples, museums and private collections. At the end of the book there are comments to

each photo. Here are two of my favorites:

"All flower arrangement is a form of prayer. As I (...) stand the flowers, and give them water, I continually pray to something in nature. Through prayer, the starting point for all flower arrangement, the true heart of all plant life is revealed."

"The pleasure of arranging flowers lies in discovering the beauty of form, which gradually becomes apparent through the process of simplifying the materials used. By cutting a flower, you are able to penetrate the reality of it's form - a reality hidden while it is blooming in it's natural state. This is the unique fascination of ikebana; if not for that it would be a sin to cut the flowers."

The book also has a very interesting review of the history of ikebana, giving more attention than other reviews that I have read to the Shinto roots of Ikebana. It also focuses on the balanse between the tatehana style of ikebana, growing ever larger and more elaborate, showy but also sacred and formal, and the nageire style that came to symbolize the aesthetics of simple restraint and the momentariness of life.

Inspired Flower Arrangements

by Toshiro Kawase

Foreword by Issey Miyake

Kodansha International, Tokyo and New York, 1990

120 pages. 74 large colour photos.

Kawase Toshiro Official Hompage

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Tall Green Leaves

Sogetsu Master Instructor Mr.Toshiyuki Ohki visited Norway last week and gave a demonstration at the Historical Museum. I wasn't able to be there, but I was told he made a fantastic arrangement with Cat's tail. I guess that is why my ikebana teacher gave me a bunch of Cat's tail leaves and told me to create an extra tall arrangement with them. I combined the leaves with some really beautiful Gentian flowers that I found in a shop. Nice and strong blue and green coulors. The leftovers where used for a Basic Upright arrangement, also with extra heigth.

Focus on straight lines, vertical arrangemnet, freestyle Kabuwake. Cat's tail leaves and Gentian.

Basic Upright arrangement. Strelitzia leaves, Gentian and Gerbera.

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Lunching with Roses

Can you imagine having your daily lunch in a cantine with enormous Munch paintings on the walls? That's what life is like for the workers at the Freia chocolate factory in Oslo. And they even get to eat as much chocolate as they like. The cantine is facing a secluded garden. This is where Oslo Rose Festival takes place every summer.

I've been helping out with the ikebana exhibition at Oslo Rose Festival for four years now. It's only up for two days so we're keeping it a smaller exhibition. I made these five arrangements refering to flower themes in poetry and literature.

No wind; grass, dark pink rose and wild flowers in a raku vase.

"The most beautiful rose has been found"

(Hans Adolf Brorson 1694-1764)

Re-circling (for Sofu); scrap metal, lily and pine.

Nageire, Variation number 4; Spinosa branches with pink roses in a naked raku vase.

Summer Night; maple, yellow roses and pine.

"Turning strong men into dreamers"

(Nils Collett Vogt 1864-1937)

Further into the forest (Little Red Riding Hood); Larch and red roses.

"And whenever she had picked one,

she fancied that she saw a still prettier one farther on,

and ran after it."

You'll find more about this ikebana exhibition on my Norwegian website, including photos of some really nice arrangements by my teacher Lisbeth Lerum.

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