Enchanting Ikebana: Step-By-Step Japanese Flower Arrangements

I bought this for Mother's day. My mother loves the book and was very pleased with the book. I personally love the practical step by step instructions and find them very useful for a beginner who wants to create precise ikebana. My mother in contrast is more interested in using the book as sort inspiration and never uses the step-by-step instructions. I deducted one star for Reiko Tanaka's dull choice in flowers. I would expect something interesting and striking in flowers and she failed to deliver.

If you love to learn flower arrangement but are frustrated by pretty books that don't show you HOW to make an arrangement, this is the book for you! There are detailed step-by-step instructions for each arrangement. As one of the reviewer had mentioned, the only shortcoming for this book is that some plant material may not be available in the US. Still, I don't see this as too much of an issue as it is not too difficult to substitute native plants with similar look and color. I highly recommend this to ikebana neophytes.

To defined the meaning or tells about the ikibana arrangement

Ms. Takenaka is a remarkable artist. Her ability to combine shape and texture of natural (and man-made) materials to reveal the simple elegance of Japanese style is inspiring. Each of the 60 or so examples have reasonable instructions. I gave it only 4 stars because some of the plant materials are not readily available and alternatives are not suggested. Nevertheless this book will generate many ideas of your own.