Create Vivid Otherworldly Ikebana Beauty with a Flower Artist in Kamakura

A unique perspective on nature’s ephemeral beauty

Five minutes from Kita-Kamakura Station, atelier and gallery Ame Kita-Kamakura was founded in 2020 by flower artist Norihiko Kamei. After studying traditional Japanese tea ceremony and Ikebana flower arrangement as a student, Kamei attained a master’s degree from the Sogetsu School of Ikebana. He says that a focus on creating condensed and magnificent microcosmic worlds – a uniquely Japanese aesthetic found also in bonsai, tea ceremony, and miniature gardens, has been a lifelong theme of his work.

“I want to create something that wasn’t there before,” says Kamei.

Kamei’s art product brand “雨 ame” (“Amé”) uses fresh, preserved, and artificial design flowers to conjure colorful landscapes from thin air right before your eyes. “Ame,” Japanese for “rain,” reflects Kamei’s desire to create works that “irrigate and nourish the soul just like the beauty of nature’s own greenery.”

“Marumado” (“Circular Window”) is a work portraying a painting-like world of tranquil beauty, suggesting idealized natural scenery just beyond a window.

“Hanayama” (“Flower Mountain”) depicts a bird’s eye view over a romanticized mountainscape using a combination of small seasonal flowers.

Landscapes that fit in the palm of your hand

In this experience, you will create a colorful “Windswept Landscape” art piece modeled after Kamei’s original “Keshikifu”, by arranging preserved and dried flowers into Sakurajima floatstones. These are objets d’art meant to represent “unknown vistas in the palm of your hand”. Enjoy the freedom of creative expression, using floatstones one size smaller than Kamei’s usual landscapes.

A completed work of "Keshikifu" ("Windswept Landscape")

When your work is complete, you can choose from four different aroma oils to invoke the scent of a soft breeze blowing through the scenery you have created. These oils were blended from natural Japanese fragrances like yuzu citrus, cypress, and perilla mint by Keiichiro Tsuda of perfumer “sōhon”. When you place a drop on the floatstone of your landscape, you’ll feel the fragrant winds of nature and the mysterious liminal sensation of standing between reality and fantasy.

Kamei’s works on display in his atelier

What inspirations will you draw from, and what ideas will you put into your work? Kamei’s commentary will help put you in an inspired frame of mind. He’ll also teach you how to handle the preserved flowers and various other materials and empower you with knowledge before you begin.

Vibrant flowers and idiosyncratic stones

“Windswept Landscape” art pieces are created with tweezers and scissors. It’s hard not to have your mood brightened by a glimpse of all the preserved and dried flowers arrayed on the table.

A thrilling palette of vivid flowers

After arranging your chosen flower palette, choose a base of floatstone with an “oasis” sponge embedded within. Each floatstone has a unique shape and color. Make your choices based on the interplay of color, or the texture that suits the scenery you wish to create.

The floatstones forming the landscape bases were collected from the volcanic Sakurajima peninsula.

The private pleasure of creating an unseen landscape

After you’ve chosen your flower material and floatstone, you’ll “plant” your flowers in the stone under Kamei’s guidance. You’ll learn the ins and outs of the basic techniques and tricks of inserting the flowers so that you can relax and enjoy it no matter what your skill level.

After Kamei’s thorough instruction, dig in yourself.

Choose your flowers and place them into the stone one by one. This meticulous, meditative work in a calm, flat black space without distractions calms the mind, transporting you far from the hustle and stress of everyday life into a world of extraordinary beauty and self-expression.

Arranging each flower, mindful to color harmony

One way to check whether you’re achieving a proper soft gradient of color is to squint your eyes, remove glasses if you wear them, or otherwise blur your vision periodically. One of the joys of “Windswept Landscape” arrangements is to create gorgeous soft gradients without sharp boundaries between colors. Flowers can be removed and replaced even after being placed, so you can work and revise to your liking as you go

A time of relaxation with tea and Kamakura specialty sweets

Seasonal teas and Kamakura confections are available during breaks or after you complete your landscape. Enjoy a sumptuous moment of taking in your work with refreshments.

Enjoy a moment of downtime with seasonal tea and Kamakura specialty sweets.

Beauty fades, but faded beauty is beauty in its own right. “I want people to enjoy watching the colors fade with the passage of time just as they would in nature itself.” The wabi-sabi transience and ephemerality of landscape arrangements only further evokes our changing world of seasons and ages, right in the palm of your hand. 

Choose from four types of aroma oil (Wabunka exclusive 5ml half-size)

Four different aromas (5ml of oil each) are available: “Color wind,” “pale wind,” “green wind,” and “nostalgic wind.” Compare the scents and choose the one that suits your landscape perfectly. A well-made landscape piece can use the harmony of colors, textures, and scents to make an unreal vista feel familiar or even nostalgic.

Bring color to your life with your own work of art.

Create a scene that captures the beauty and nostalgia in your mind, and then keep it to cherish in the palm of your hand or a corner of your home.

A choice of two types of flower art to create

As an alternate option to a fragrant “Windswept Landscape” art piece, you can opt instead to create “Hakoniwa” (“Boxed Garden”), perfect as an interior piece or a gift for a loved one. Ame’s original boxed garden arrangements portray stunning, vivid personalized gardens inside square boxes of paulownia wood that fit into the palm of your hand (60x60x31 mm).
(“Boxed Garden” arrangements include a change of price, and do not include aromatic oils.)

“Hakoniwa” (“Boxed Garden”), the grandeur of nature in a small pawlonia wood box.