Wellington Sogetsu Teacher's AGM and workshop using Red Flowers

Sunday’s workshop was to celebrate the current Sogetsu lemonto Akane Teshigahara’s 60th birthday, in line with celebrations at Sogetsu Headquarters in Japan. Our teachers had decided we should celebrate with red vases or flowers and wearing some red clothing if possible. Red is the significant colour for Japanese people when they turn 60. Unfortunately, because of the spread of the Covid-19, Akane’s birthday celebrations in Japan have been postponed till August. Classes at headquarters and other exhibitions have also been cancelled Happily, our workshop proceeded as planned with teacher Sandi taking the lead. Sandi produced a colour wheel and spoke about the different tones of red from bright pink through to orange. She referenced 3 lessons from Book 3, lessons 8, “Colours in the same tonal range”, lesson 9 “Colours in Contrast” and lesson 10 “Colour of the container”. Sandi demonstrated three arrangements. The first used two tomato red vases with vertical camellia leaves and pink daisies. She then placed red and white Mizuhiki across the top to connect the two vases together. Mizuhiki of different colours are used in celebratory arrangements, especially for New Year. The second was an orange plastic watering can with orange toned Nandina and some dried dyed grass stalks. Arrangement three included some bright red roses and camellia branches, in a muddy red nageire container. We set to work on our own arrangements with Sandi critiquing them when we had finished. You can see from the photos the many different interpretations of the workshop theme. Finally we took a photo of us all with some arrangements, to send to Sogetsu HQ. Julie Middleton