Inspiration: wabi-sabi & floral arranging

“If you fiddle this way and that with the flowers and consequently they wither, that will be no benefit. It is the same with a person’s life.” - Sen Soshitsu XV

WABI-SABI is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It's simple, slow, and uncluttered-and it reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-Sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet-that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came.

Arrange the flowers as they are in the fields, in a humble container. Photo by Joe Coca 

"Wabi-sabi flowers (chabana) aren’t arranged. They’re placed, in their most natural form, into unpretentious vessels.

Nagarie, a simple, austere style of arranging flowers that literally translates as “throw in,” evolved alongside tea ceremony in the 16th century. This method requires no training or talent, but it does require humility, in admitting we can’t improve on nature, and a willingness to observe without judging or meddling. (No problem, right?)

“It is just meaningless to employ readymade ideas when arranging flowers,” Shogo Kariyazaki, Japan’s most famous flower arranger, told the Daily Yomiuri. “Flowers are already complete in their natural beauty. You need to have originality and ingenuity when making beautiful arrangements with them...Arranging flowers can be compared to cooking, You can make tasty dishes once you are able to apply your own ideas to basic recipes.”

Unlike ikebana, which has a litany of stringent, stylized rules about how to combine and arrange flowers, chabana (“tea flowers”) has only one: strive for a simple, natural look. Wabi flowers are always seasonal, arranged to look as they do in the fields. Each stem gets room to breathe; they’re never crowded into big, frothy mounds. Stems aren’t cut down to create uniformity; no frogs or wires are used. Branches are never forced, and tulips bending in their final days are as welcome as sprightly daffodils.

Minimalism is key: One wild rose bud trumps a blowsy display of English roses. Pick a few chicory stems from between the sidewalk’s cracks and let them settle into an old bottle. Work with single flowers and small, odd numbers. (That tired old design rule that sets three as the standard became the norm because it works.) Forget about flowers and use a solitary branch (bare in midwinter, budding in springtime) or a few tall grasses. Trade in crystal vases for humble containers: baskets, bamboo slices, hollowed gourds, old jars, a well-shaped bottle that held dessert wine."
- By Robyn Griggs Lawrence

Here are some more key points of Wabi-Sabi ...

An intuitive world-view
Relative
Looks for personal, idiosyncratic solutions
One-of-a-kind/variable
There is no progress
Present-oriented
Believes in the uncontrollability of nature
Romanticizes nature
People adapting to nature
Organic organization of form (soft, vague shapes and edges)
The bowl as a metaphor (free shape, open at top)
Natural materials
Ostensibly crude
Accommodates to degradation and attrition
Is comfortable with ambiguity and contradiction
To every thing there is a season