Nageire is arranging flowers as though tossing them into the vessel in their natural form, a free and plain method as against the constructed approaches of rikka and seika. It is learned as the basis of tea flowers and is held to express the sensibility of wabi tea since Rikyu most directly.
Origins
It spread among townspeople and practitioners as a reaction against the increasing formalisation of medieval rikka. Rikyu's instruction that flowers should be as they are in the field is taken as a statement of the spirit of nageire, and it has carried forward as the basic principle of tea flowers.
In practice
Usually one or two stems, chosen from what is actually in season and in flower locally, with nothing trimmed into shape. The constraint is real: a flower forced into a composition reads as a violation of the principle rather than as skill.
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Edited by the operator of Chaen (a one-person operation) / Last updated:
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