It sure took its time but we finally received our copy of the April 2020 edition of "Sō" (「草」) magazine, the official publication of the Sogetsu Teachers' Association.
Our exhibition, Surprise! (yes, the award-winning one!) last May, 2019 at the Keshen Goodman Library, is featured in this edition.
Finally! We are happy to announce that ikebana lessons will restart in September. Hopefully we can pick up where we left off!
Please check the lesson dates here.
Please note that we have given students who were booked for the cancelled March lessons priority so some lesson times may be fully booked already.
Original photo credit: Kent Martin.
We ask everyone to wear a face mask during the lesson.
We ask everyone to bring their own clippers, if possible.
Hand sanitizer will be available at the studio.
If you feel sick or have any COVID-19 symptoms, please stay home, call 811 and take care.
If you have travelled outside of the Atlantic bubble within the past 14 days before the lesson date, please complete your self-isolation first.
Thank you for our understanding.
Hope to see you soon!
We are happy to announce that our ikebana exhibition, Surprise!, held last May 10-12, 2019 at the Keshen Goodman Library has been selected by Sogetsu Headquarters to be one of the recipients of the Sogetsu Sakuhin Award (草月作品賞)* for 2019.
We thank all our students who participated in this exhibit. It was due to all your hard work that we are able to receive this recognition from Sogetsu School. Everyone, take a bow! We are very proud of you!
The award ceremony was supposed to be held last March, 2020…but it was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. So we just received the Award in the mail.
A very rough translation:
The Sogetsu Sakuhin Award is presented to Surprise! Sogetsu Ikebana Exhibition.
Your work imbued with novel ideas and a bold spirit of challenge adds a new page to Sogetsu's diverse creative activities. We commend your achievements with the Sogetsu Sakuhin Award and look forward to your future activities.
Dated March 27, 2020. Signed by Akane Teshigahara, Headmaster of the Sogetsu School
* NB:
We could not find an appropriate way to translate this award so we left the word “sakuhin” (作品) as it is. “Sakuhin” means “a work of art or literature.” The direct translation would have been the “Sogetsu Work Award”…but that didn’t really feel right in English. One possible way to convey the meaning of the award is to translate it as something like the “Sogetsu Excellent Work Award” or maybe the “Sogetsu Award for Excellent Work”…although the word for “excellent” was never in it.
The list of award recipients for 2019 as published in So Magazine, June 2020 edition. (Sorry, in Japanese only.)
The exhibition poster.
We’ve been through a heat wave recently here in Halifax. We finally capitulated and bought an electric fan. What caught my eye was the packaging cushion. It was made of moulded pulp, with a rough and interesting texture. It was of course formed in the specific shape to protect the appliance. But I thought to transform it and use it as a flower container!
So, I folded it in some parts, tore up other parts, and put them together again….and then painted it black. I also made room inside for a container to hold water.
Next, I cut off the light twigs from a dried spruce branch, which I had sparsely painted white. The little twigs were rearranged into a small cluster. By placing it to seem like it was floating above the dense-looking container, I sought to show contrast between heavy and light.
Here is the whole arrangement.
I hope you like it. —Miyako
On July 24, 2020, the province of Nova Scotia announced that wearing face masks becomes mandatory when entering most indoor public spaces starting from July 31, 2020. This regulation includes retail establishments like ours. (Read the NS government’s announcement here for complete details including exemptions.)
We ask for your cooperation when visiting our shop. Let us help keep each other safe and healthy. Thank you very much for your understanding.
It’s summer. The tiny yellow flowers of the forsythia in our garden are long gone. They have now turned into lush green leafy branches! They can bring a refreshing feeling into the house.
This arrangement is placed at our entrance foyer…a light and cheery welcome as one comes in!
Here is the whole arrangement.
I hope you like it. —Miyako
I found some pine branches that fell off a tree. It looked like they had been there for a while because the pine needles were in showing different stages of discolouration as it started to dry up.
I took the branches apart, re-assembled and mounted them on a board to create a relief arrangement.
Here is the whole arrangement.
I hope you like it. —Miyako
As the weather becomes warmer, the lupins start to bloom here in Atlantic Canada. They are beautiful and, happily, they are all over the place!
A typical Halifax roadside scene in the summer.
It is wonderful to see the purples and pinks amid the refreshing green. We try to bring this freshness into our ikebana arrangement, using the lupins from our yard. This arrangement is a floor position arrangement, i.e. it is meant to be viewed from above.
I hope you like it. —Miyako
Finally!
The shop will reopen on June 20th, Saturday.
New store hours are: Mon-Sat, 1:00-5:00 pm. We’ll try that for now and see how it goes.
Blade sharpening service will also re-start. Knives will be picked up and returned on Tuesdays.
We will have a hand sanitizer bottle at the door and we ask all customers to use it as they enter.
We are excited to reconnect with the community! See you!
To all who loved our masks, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
After over 3000 masks in more than 200 patterns, it is time to wind down the mask-making activity. Our masks will not completely disappear. They will still be available online and in our shop for a while. But we are slowing down the pace.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, masks were scarce and hard to find. We believed that face masks could help. We were not scientific folk; our belief in the good of face masks was not from any rigorous, evidence-based study. But we came from Japan…and in Japan, when one caught a cold, it was normal to wear a mask in consideration of others. It wasn’t to protect oneself; it was to protect the community from oneself. So, we made masks with our little home sewing machine. We sold our masks “at cost”. It was our own little way of helping our community battle this pandemic. And the next two months turned out to be one of the busiest times for us just keeping up with demand we actually had not expected!
But now, the big stores seem to have face masks available already….even the dollar store has them for sale. Time for us small players to step back and let the big boys fill the need. Besides, we are getting ready to re-open our shop really soon!
Things seem to be looking better for us here in Nova Scotia but please stay vigilant. Let’s keep washing our hands frequently! Stay safe. We are all in this together.
Updated October 2nd, 2020
As of October 1st, 2020, we have officially ended our mask-making activity.
We thank you for loving our masks.
