Ikebana and us

 Saturday 16th November 2024 It is a rainy week in Chennai as the North-East monsoon brings us rain spells and storms. 10 of us assembled at the ABK hall for our November demonstration and workshop.  Sensei Chitra T chose the theme of unconventional matierla for her demonstration. She was well prepared and organised, and quickly began after a ew customary announcements.. Chitra T's first composition - Beautiful black glass vase with curves, was complemented with the white wire which was stapled.  Canna lily leaves created bold movement and mass, and was complimented with the wine coloured Chrysanthemums. She explained the structure of her second composition.  A self made iron stand around which she twined a plastic hose pipe.  A small plastic bottle with water was wired behind, to hold fresh material.  Her first variation with this unconventional material used gladioli, carnations, fox tail and dieffenbachia leaves. After the demonstration, after conversations with Riji sensei Mala

 September 21st 2024 Our September meeting was held as usual at the ABK Hall on Saturday, September 21, 2024. Sensei Molly Cherian gave a demonstration on line, surface and mass and colour. Sensei Molly wowed us with her fabulous demonstration. Sensei Molly was assisted in her demonstration by Susan Sudhir. For her first arrangement Sensei Molly used Caladium leaves for surface, Dracaena branches for straight lines, metal wire for curved lines, and Hydrangea flowers for mass in a Sogetsu ceramic container.                       Next she used a red biscuit tin as an improvised container. Dry umbrella palm branches painted in black was arranged as surface, yellow Heliconia as lines and curled Pandana leaves used as mass.               For the third arrangement Sensei Molly used a rust coloured metal pot as the container to achieve colour contrast. She used dry Mulberry branch as horizontal line, a single large papaya leaf as surface and Cana flowers along with a spray of Gypsophila arran

Our August meeting was held on the 4th of August at ABK with 14 members in attendance.Three guests also attended the meeting The meeting began with our Chairperson Mrs Malathi Pandurang introducing our Sensei Chitra Rajan. Sensei Chitra Rajan is  a young teacher in ikebana and a young teacher in meditation.She is affiliated to the Heartfulness Institute formerly known as Sahaj Marg and Shri Ramachandra Mission. She is a certified meditation practitioner and teacher. Sensei Chitra began her demonstration with a talk on the origins of ikebana and its connectivity with meditation. Sensei Chitra shared the paragraphs below for the blog. The history of Ikebana has its origins in ancient times where Japanese following Shintoism expressed their faith in flowers . Even today, a branch of the sakaki tree, an evergreen, is offered to the shrine. The ancient Japanese believed that the divine spirit was present in all growing trees and plants.  When Buddhism was introduced through the silk route i