Christine de Beer - effortless floral craftsman
A Floral Art Demonstration by Floral Trends Design Group
- 1 April 2011
- click to send Christine a smile
Based on the poem:"Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink" from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
All the designs demonstrated by members of the Floral Trends Design Group focused on the fresh water crisis around the world.
My theme: Desalination
This design was inspired by a Shishi Odoshi tipping fountain
Desalination Design
Desalination is the method of cleansing and purifying salt water into drinkable fresh water. Sea water is slowly filtered through a bed of bamboo charcoal to remove all the impurities. It is then boiled. As the water boils steam rises and condensate. These drops of clean fresh water trickle down into a separate base leaving the salt crystals behind.
The Shishi Odoshi fountain
The Shishi Odoshi fountain or bamboo deer chaser was historically used by rice farmers in Japan to chase away animals from their crop.Today you will find the Shishi Odoshi fountains in meditation centres and Japanese tea gardens as a spiritual cleansing and purifying element.
The fountain slowly trickles water into a diagonal tipping spout. When the spout is filled with water it tips over spilling the water into a fountain base and when empty it tips back up and hits the base to make a loud clack sound.
I made my Shishi Odoshi fountain from PVC pipe and sprayed it green. During the demonstration water slowly trickled down the design to fill the tipping spout.
The first of my plant material was two twig blinds that hang down the Shishi Odoshi fountain. You can see how I made the twig blinds by following the link below to my Tutorial
Beautiful Blue Iris flowers hangs down (and up-side down) on my twig blind to emphasize the trickling water
Adding strands of kelp.
Water slowly trickled down the design as "sea water" over the kelp to tip into the large glass vase as "fresh water" to sustain the Lucky bamboo
If you look carefully at the pictures below you will see how happy I was the moment my fountain tipped to neatly spill the water in the glass vase- its always nerve wrecking trying something like this on stage!
Shishi Odoshi (tipping fountain) with Iris flowers, Kelp and Lucky Bamboo and two twig blinds that I made out of sticks and wire
Design detail: I used water filled reeds as "test tubes" to keep my Iris flowers hydrated. I also made wire hooks for each flower so that I could hang them upright or upside down in the design.
Floral Art Demonstration: Floral Trends Design Group, Western Cape Association of Flower Arrangers, South African Flower Union
A photograph of this design was included in the 2011 South African Flower Union Calender (October).
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Tutorials
Weave twigs in parallel to create a twig blind with strong but natural horizontal lines.
I love hanging flowers to loosely dangle and move in a design
Favourite Flowers
Dutch Iris or widow iris are the best known varieties used as cut flowers
Lucky Bamboo, Ribbon Dracaena, Belgian Evergreen, Ribbon Plant
Related Designs
My design "Desalination" featured in the 2011 South African Flower Union Calender
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