On Feb. 26, at the Koelbel Library in Centennial, a group of flower arrangers assembled to hear a visiting professor give a lecture. Dan Dell’Agnese was steadily assembling a cherry blossom arrangement.
“For me a little bit it does come naturally,” Dell’Agnese said as he trimmed a branch.
Dell’Agnese is a professor of Japanese flower arranging, or ikenaba, and is the president of the Colorado chapter of the Ikenobō Ikebana Society of America. Ikebana itself is the Japanese practice of arranging flowers, while the latter is the oldest and largest school of flower arranging with its own style and philosophy. Dell’Agnese is currently one of the highest-ranking Americans within the school. To say Dell’Agnese knows his flowers is an understatement.
“In the Ikenobo scrolls, it doesn’t say you have to be quiet. It doesn’t say you’re supposed to be meditating. It says that you must see the plants and not the physical being of the plants. You must see the virtual nature of the spirit of the plant,” he said.
Being president and the schedule that comes with it is sometimes a challenge for Dell’Agnese.
“I don’t often get to arrange for myself until I go to Japan and take classes at the school.”
The Colorado chapter of Ikenobō has over 50 members and hosts exhibitions and workshops throughout the Denver metro area. He has been president of the chapter for 16 years but started learning about ikebana and Japanese culture when he attended the University of Wisconsin where he met a Japanese exchange student who taught him about the practice. Early on, he also became enamored with a type of Japanese pottery called Mashiko yaki after meeting a pottery teacher with a studio in Japan. The pottery teacher brought Dell’Angese to Japan for the first time to learn the techniques, which he still uses today to make the vessels for his arrangements.
“For me, they go together. I make pottery for different kinds of arrangements and different styles,” Dell’Agnese said.
Mashiko pottery is often simple in style, which pairs well with the aesthetic achieved by Ikenobō arrangements. Dell’Agnese was drawn to the Ikenobō school for its use of materials in a natural way and emphasis on the lack of ego.
“In other schools, they will tell you you have to see the surface and the line, you have to see the design. [They say] ‘I’m making a sculpture’ or’ I’m being a designer and I’m ultramodern.’ We say that’s all ego and egotistical,” Dell’Agnese said. “You’re not looking at the plants.”
The room was working on rikka arrangements, which are characterized by using lots of branches and non-flowering parts of plants to imitate landscapes. As other members were still in the beginning processes of trimming their cherry tree branches and arranging them in their vases, Dell’Agnese was quickly moving through the steps and adding other types of foliage. This earned a chuckle from a visiting professor who commented that he worked faster than she did.
Dell’Agnese stressed the importance of understanding the philosophy and history of the arrangements and was especially conscientious of the fact that meanings can have a hard time traveling across borders. Having been to Japan countless times to study with Ikenobō masters, he is able to compare the way Westerners pick up flower arranging compared to those in other parts of the world.
“It is very difficult to train Westerners to not have an egotistical way of thinking. Westerners always like to say, ‘Look at this beautiful thing I made, look how wonderful I am. Look how accomplished I am. Look at how wonderful of a designer I am, I made this.’ A person who understands [Ikenobō] would never say that. You would never say something like that, that would be insulting. So it is a philosophy, it is a nature. It is a way of doing,” he said.
Many members in the room seem to have picked up on these teachings. One arranger, Pam Healy, was trained in Western flower arranging, but wanted to try something new and has been “retraining her brain” to learn this style of arranging.
“I think Western style uses a lot of abundance and a lot of floral material, where [with] this you have space and voids, and each line has its own part to it,” Healy said.
Another arranger, Julie Benson, has embraced the Buddhist teachings that come with learning Ikenobō.
“It’s a real journey in patience, non-judgment of myself, non-judgment of materials and doing the best I can because especially in the West, everybody has such negative self-talk,” Benson said.
As for his own Ikenobō journey, Dell’Agnese still has much he can learn from other masters of ikebana, but there isn’t as much room for exponential growth.
“I’m at the end. I’m at the twilight years. I’m a little sad about that. Rank wise and everything, [I’m] at the end. We’ll have to see.”
In terms of projects though, there is still much Dell’Agnese wants to accomplish. His pottery work is his first love when it comes to crafts, and he intends to take part in this year’s invitational Ikenobō spring exhibition in Kyoto. In the meantime, he will be present for the students in the Colorado chapter.
“I always hope that people stick with it and to have some perseverance, and some fun with it too,” Dell’Agnese said. “I mean, we have a wonderful amount of fun here and you know, sometimes life is imperfect, right? Sometimes your branches aren’t perfect. Sometimes things happen. That’s okay. You can still have a nice time, right?”
