Study room for | the art appreciation and production of plum blossom flower arrangement
Text: Mr. Hanaki
Flower arrangement is one of the customs and art forms with a long tradition in the mainland, mainly through the idea of creativity, and then cut the flower material, inserted into the flower vessel, so as to form a three-dimensional pattern, to reflect the creator's aesthetic taste and artistic pursuit. The flower materials used for flower arrangement have a wide range of sources, and the stems, leaves, flowers and fruits of plant flowers can be materials. Among them, plum blossoms are the most common high-quality flower materials for spring flower arrangement.
Plum blossoms in the mainland has more than 3,000 years of connoisseur cultivation history, as one of the ten traditional famous flowers, plum blossoms bloom a hundred flowers before the world, the world is spring; proud of frost and snow, fragrant and overflowing; ice muscles and jade bones, otherworldly; plum stems are curved and vigorous, healthy and upright; plum branches are horizontal, dense, and mottled with light and shadow; so plums, with their noble, strong and modest character, are listed as "four gentlemen in flowers" together with orchids, bamboo and chrysanthemums, and are called "three friends of the cold year" together with pine and bamboo. In traditional Chinese culture, it gives people the inspiration to work hard.
Plum blossom arrangement has a long history and tradition in the mainland, as early as the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the Southern and Northern Dynasties, has appeared. During the Three Kingdoms period, Lu Kai, a chancellor of Eastern Wu, gave a plum blossom to his friend Fan Ye (not a literary scholar of the Liu Song Dynasty) who was far away in Chang'an, and gave a poem: "Fold the flowers and send them to the Longtou people." Gangnam has nothing, talk about giving a branch of spring. "The meaning is beautiful, the fun is full of fun, and it has always been praised."
Emperor Gaozuwu of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Xiao Yan, an all-rounder of wen and martial arts, was widely knowledgeable and erudite, and once composed the "Sixteen Songs of the Four O'Clock in the Midnight Night, Spring Songs, and The Third Song" has: "Zhu Riguang Su Bing, Yellow Flowers Reflect white snow." Fold the plum to be beautiful, and welcome the spring moon together. "The sunny sun outside the house shines in the snow, and the plum blossoms inside reflect the beauty, creating a beautiful yangchun beauty, the rhythm is gentle, fresh and beautiful, which is a good word." The origami plum flower arrangement is also one of the earliest records.
After the Tang and Song dynasties, folk plum flower arrangements were very popular. For example, the "Early Plum" of the Sheng Tang Pastoral Poet Meng Haoran has: "There are early plums in the garden, and the annual case of cold opening." The young woman scrambled to climb and fold, and would return to the mirror table. He didn't see enough, and he wanted to cut with scissors. The poem "Lying in the Night Of Sleep" by Yang Wanli, a famous poet of the Southern Song Dynasty, has: "This year, a snow has spread all over Jianghuai, and the half moon cannot be frozen." Sitting alone, the county is lonely, a red candle and two bottles of plums. "These all show that plum planting was very popular during the Tang and Song dynasties, and until now, plum blossoms are the ideal flower material for making flower arrangements in late winter and early spring."
So, how to make plum blossom flower arrangements? The author believes that plum blossom arrangement, from the perspective of style, can be divided into three kinds, one is the family plum, one is the art plum, and the other is the study room. Different styles naturally have slight differences in the selection and collocation of materials, so let's briefly talk about their characteristics.
Family plum insertion is mostly manifested as people's love for nature and the pursuit of life interest, so plum insertion is more casual and enthusiastic. You can cut or fold a branch or several branches of plum blossoms with buds, choose a variety of flower utensils, or even used wine bottles and pots, fill them with water, and then insert them, or you can match a variety of spring flowers and plants as embellishments.
Artistic plum insertion, it is necessary to conceive in advance, combine the flower utensils, and then selectively cut the plum branches with buds, after technical shaping and processing, assist other flower materials, and then form the ideal plum blossom pattern, creating an aesthetic taste and artistic expression. However, most of the artistic plum insertion requirements are higher, and the creators need to have a high cultural literacy and aesthetic foundation. Nowadays, the production of flower arrangers, most of the two points are lacking, the author coldly looked at, many of the so-called art plum insertion is too routine, sometimes the craftsmanship is too strong, but it seems to be more than regular, lack of agility, and even the style is vulgar, and there is no mood to speak of.
Literary plum insertion, one of the manifestations of the literati's study offering, is another unique form of plum insertion that is different from family plum insertion and artistic plum insertion. The literary room plum embodies the spiritual realm and cultural pursuit of the scribes, and is a way of venting for the literati and inkers to send their feelings and comfort. Compared with the enthusiasm and exuberance of family plum insertion, the study room plum insertion is more focused on indifference and elegance and full of fun; compared with the artistic plum insertion, it is more concise and flexible and has a wind and bone.
In the author's humble opinion, the study room inserts plums, first of all, in the selection of materials. Varieties of natural chrysanthemums such as wax plum (wax plum of the wax plum family), dragon plum, apricot plum, straight-footed plum and so on, can be made of study room plum, and the water plum is not suitable for the shape of the study room plum because most of them are weeping branches. In the selection of branches, the old branches of the plum tree are gray and brown, and the young branches are green and more straight; while the plum blossoms are mostly blooming on the new branches, and the old branches have fewer plum blossom buds. Therefore, when choosing to plant plum blossom branches, first choose the form, try to choose the vigorous and healthy, curved and simple branches, but also take into account the above to have dense and elegant flower buds, so that the flower type is both, take the Song Dynasty poet Lin Kui's poem: "The shadow is shallow and shallow, and the dark fragrance floats in the dusk of the moon".
The second is the trimming of the shape, there are trade-offs. It should be noted that a plum branch in the study room is enough, which can show the plum blossom style bone; do not be like a family flower arrangement, a few branches are inserted together, there is more than enough enthusiasm, and the artistic conception is nothing. The shape of the plum branch can be borrowed from the traditional bonsai model, such as oblique dry type, lying dry type, curved dry type, etc., the main branch is shorter, implicit convergence, ready to go, take its simple and vigorous meaning; the side branches are folded, like a flying dragon in the sky, taking its dangerous and lonely arrogance. The structure should be dense and orderly, retracted freely, combined with dynamic and static, rigid and soft; echoing each other, full of rhythm, full of movement.
As for the choice of flower utensils, there are porcelain vases, clay pots are the best, choose a small mouth and a large belly of the flower utensils, if the plum bottle is excellent, so that it can better reflect the wind and bone and charm of plum blossoms. As for matching flowers, the author recommends not matching other flowers. Some articles introduce plum cuttings, and plum blossoms and bamboo pine branches together, seemingly in order to show the pine and bamboo plums "three friends of the cold year"; some put plum blossoms and begonia flowers together, which is more tacky.
In fact, the traditional plum arrangement is a separate flower arrangement, in order to highlight the integrity and elegant temperament of the plum blossom, together with the pine branches and leaves, can not play a role in foiling, because pine trees and bamboo are rarely used as flower arrangements, most of them are made of bonsai alone, which can show a beautiful posture, and the plum blossoms together to do flower arrangement is a bit of a snake. As for the plum blossom and other flowers arranged together, because they all bloom and affect each other, they cannot distinguish between the primary and secondary, and there is a suspicion of being noisy and dominant, which is really not suitable for the study room to insert plums.
Due to the differences in cultural literacy and aesthetics of each person, the understanding of flower arrangement is naturally different. The above is the author's first shallow opinion on plum blossom arrangement, it is inevitable to be biased, welcome teachers and flower arrangement enthusiasts to criticize axe, thank you!
(Some of the pictures are from the Internet, if there is an infringement link to delete, some are simulated flowers and bonsai, for reference only)
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