;)
Click to Enlarge
;)
Click to Enlarge
;)
Click to Enlarge
However, the act of arranging flowers became a traditional and spiritual act in Japan, and was elevated to a high art.
The Japanese empathy with life and death of flowers is reflected in the very word "ikebana" which is derived from ikeru (to make live) and hana (flowers).
Ikebana is simply the act of attempting to see beyond the flower before one's eye to the hidden, inner "heart of the flower"- just as people in love seek to know each other's true hearts.
What is Ikebana?
Ikebana has been practiced for more than six hundred years. Developed from the Buddhist ritual of offering flowers to the spirits of dead. By the middle of the fifteenth century ikebana achieved the status of an art form independent of its religious origins, though it continued to retain strong symbolic and philosophical overtones. The first teachers and students were priests and members of the nobility, but as time passed, many schools arose, styles changed, and ikebana came to be practiced at all levels of Japanese society.
The varying forms of ikebana share certain common features, regardless of the period or school. Any plant material - branches, leaves, grasses, moss and fruit, as well as flowers - may be used. Withered leaves, seedpods and buds are valued as highly as flowers in full bloom. While a work may be composed of only one, or of many different kinds of materials, the selection of each element demands an experienced eye, and the arrangement requires considerable technical skill in order to create a kind of beauty that cannot be found in nature.
What distinguish ikebana from simpler decorative approaches is its asymmetrical form and the use of "empty" space as an essential feature of the composition. A sense of harmony among the materials, the container and the setting is also crucial. These are characteristics of the Japanese aesthetic feeling that ikebana shares with traditional paintings, gardens, architecture and design.
In its historical development the expression means to give new life to flowers and plants; not only by sowing, planting, taking care of and watching them, but also by separating them from their natural environment, by analyzing the specialties in line, shape and color, by intended grouping and composing in order to express a certain idea.
Modern Ikebana is less strict and structured then it's ancient counterparts. Many modern styles of ikebana have a more simplistic style of arrangement, according to the creators own tastes and ideas. As the saying goes:
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."