The March meeting marked the anniversary of the founding of the Melbourne Chapter in 1959. This is also traditionally "Japanese Day" in the Chapter. Japanese members of the Chapter make a special focus of Japanese culture at this meeting including bringing traditional food.
As is our custom we celebrated with a birthday cake that was made by Mrs Marjorie Campkin-Smith.
The candles were blown extinguished by, left to right, Mrs Campkin-Smith, the Chapter's Patron Mrs Shimida and President Nobuko Kobayashi.
The guest presenters for the meeting were Mr and Mrs Murooka who are specialists in the Japanese art of Kintsugi.
Mr and Mrs Murooka gave an interesting presentation about both the history and technique of Kintsugi repair of ceramics.
This slide of a Chinese Southern Song era bowl was shown. It had been given to the Shogun Taira no Shigemori in 1175 CE. During the time of the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1435 - 1490) it was sent to China to be replaced with and identical bowl. However, it was returned after being repaired. It is an early example of respecting the flawed beauty of a beautiful work of ceramic. It is now a National Treasure held in the Tokyo National Museum.
The presentation included a step-by-step demonstration of a simple Kintsugi repair.
Here Chapter member Jenny Loo is applying gold-coloured mica to the cleaned and joined break in a small dish.
Toula Karanikolopoulos subsequently dusted the glue with an additional layer of gold-coloured powder.
Below are the ikebana arrangements made by members on the theme of "Celebrating imperfection"
Angeline lo
Toula Karanikolopoulos
