Ikebana and us

November 17th 2016 Sensei Janaki reports:  The November 2016 demo and workshop in the ABK premises was well attended, with 12 members present. The theme of the day was miniature arrangements.  Sensei Malathi  mentioned that miniature style was a favourite of Kasumi Teshigahara. It is a very personal style, from the heart and ideal for personal spaces like dressing tables, desks and so on. Sensei Prerana  gave a demo on Miniatures and shared her experience of attending a class with Mr. Christopher Lim in Singapore earlier this year. She said that was her first exposure to miniatures, and enabled her to gain a proper understanding of this.  The key points are that the container should be small enough to fit into one’s palm, and the materials used should not be overpowering. It should be possible to make the same arrangement on a larger scale. Sensei Prerana did ten arrangements with a variety of vases and flowers, each one a beauty to behold a...

Sensei Janaki has begun a Ikebana workshop for children, and here is her account of it.  The workshop started on October and will go on until December. "A casual mention that I am an Ikebana teacher got the attention of my dear friend Mrs. Bhavani Kumar who runs Patasala Montessori School in Chennai.  She had been looking for someone to conduct floral based activities for children and thought introducing children to Ikebana would fit the bill. The "kit" This program is part of a series of life skill workshops that encourage the work of the hand. As Maria  Montessori said: "The hand is the tool for intelligence". These workshops usually involve learning skills that are useful in daily life. The school invites passionate resource people to come in and share their expertise. In the end the children absorb more of the passion and inspiration than the techniques themselves. A couple of months of planning and preparation and the workshop took off on Oct...