The centuries-old art of Ikebana, or Japanese flower arranging, captured Christine Mathis’ imagination and provided an outlet for her natural sense of creativity.

Her husband, Buck Mathis, first encouraged her to study Ikebana. One of her friends was putting together a class and asked her to enroll. Busy with her three daughters and numerous civic projects, Mathis hesitated.

“It will teach you patience, as well as flower arranging,” her friend promised.

“Enroll her,” her husband said, teasing.

Mathis didn’t have to be told twice. She had always loved anything oriental, she said. She had studied and read extensively about Japan, and even used an Asian theme when she was in charge of decorations for the senior prom. Later, she would give talks and lectures about various aspects of Japanese culture, history and architecture.

“The oriental philosophy is about the beauty of one or two — about restraint,” she said, contrasting it to the “more is better” thinking of the West.

Her first Ikebana class focused on a classical style called Ikenobo. She enjoyed it, but found it too regimented. She found her niche in another class, this one focused on the more modern, more Westernized Sogetsu style.

She went on to earn three teaching certificates in Sogetsu and to lead classes herself in her native Alabama.

In 1982, Mathis was asked by the Birmingham Museum of Arts to create flower arrangements complementing painting in nine galleries during its annual arts festival. She created 32 designs during the event.

The festival was successful, leading organizers to extend it for a second month and ask Mathis to keep making arrangements.
Since she was heading for New York City to see Norman Sparnon, the world-renowned Japanese flower arranger author and lecturer, she made the new arrangements in silk flowers, rather than fresh ones.

Now a National Council Flower Show judge emeritus, she also judged Ikebana shows all over the country. She staged the first and only statewide Ikebana show in Alabama, showing all styles of the art.

Mathis’ specialty, Sogetsu, builds arrangements in two types of containers, nageire, or tall cylinders; and moribana, or low and flat containers that might be rectangular, round or elongated — or anything that holds water, she said. “Then your imagination runs wild.”

Sogetsu uses eight basic designs, with slanting variations of each, that start with sticks or other “line” material, then use flowers to fill in the designs. “Anything is compatible. Form follows function,” she said, naming other principles of the art.

Although Ikebana is a traditional art, Mathis said it underwent a change soon after World War II when General McArthur asked the Japanese to put on a flower exhibition for the wives of Allies stationed in Japan.

Sparnon, the Ikebana expert, staged the exhibit. Sofu Teshigahara, founder and grand master of Ikebana’s Sogetsu movement, was engaged to give the program.

Teshigahara went in search for some natural materials to use in his demonstration. In the wake of WWII bombing, little was available. So he gathered burned branches and bits of driftwood to use for the lines in his arrangements, opening the door to the way those materials are used in Sogetsu arrangements today.

“Something beautiful came out of the bombing,” said Mathis, who would have loved to have attended Teshigahara’s demonstration.