Gaia Ikebana – Autumn ( Part 2)

It is getting colder and darker; leaves are falling from the trees. There is a chill in the air overnight, frost on the ground in the morning, mist and fog in the air. Dry, dead leaves crunch beneath your feet and clouds appear when you breathe out. There is still a lingering warmth but always a constant reminder of the cold to come.

This is a quote I found describing Autumn and I believe it’s a good overview description of my final food model.

RESEARCH FOR AUTUMN

For my final food model, I chose to work with the theme of thanksgiving because I felt like with this theme I could bring in the taste aspects of savoury and sweet. This contrast in taste would be able to enhance the different properties between the D, SD and SO.

RESEARCH FOR THANKSGIVING

Thanksgiving began as a day to give thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year.

According to https://www.foodnetwork.com/thanksgiving/thanksgiving-menus/classic-thanksgiving-menu, some of the few traditional dishes for thanksgiving:

  1. Squash soup
  2. Turkey w stuffing
  3. Pumpkin pie

I decided to incorporate Pumpkin Pie (Traditional thanksgiving dessert), Chocolate Fire replica (‘lingering warmth’ from the Quote, BUT this failed and hence I changed out for Turkey from the concept of Traditional thanksgiving dishes *will be explained further), Pomegranates (Seasonal Fruit produce) and Sternbergia (Seasonal Flower) into my food composition.

MAKING THE ACTUAL FOOD

Making the pumpkin pie:
1. Make the hemisphere mould using a hemisphere Tupperware and aluminium foil

  1. Make the actual pie

How it turned out!

Made another half of just the filling without the crust to make a sphere pie

Next, make the chocolate fire by following this youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0XcA9yi6uQ).

It was supposed to look like: expect that it’s red.

But, everything that could go wrong at this step went wrong.

  1. I could never get the red I intended.

On first try,

It came out a shade too light. So, I tried again with another food colouring.

Now, it’s a darker shade of pink but still not the pink I wanted.

2. I could not get the chocolate thin enough to form the fire shape.

On the first try, it was too bulky, back-firing on what I intended.

On the second try, the chocolate foil couldn’t even be rolled up.

At this point, I gave up and evaluated what I could do so I decided to replace the initial chocolate fire idea with turkey sausages instead.

It was held together with toothpicks.

I made the cone out of honey comb chocolate to signify honey-glaze turkey.

Food composition:

However, after consulting with Cheryl, she made a valid point that the sausages is stealing the show from the pumpkin pie because of its bulkiness. and how similar they were in length. So I made a reduction to the number of sausages and also the cone.

I am happy I made the change to this composition because

  1. The ambiguous D, SD, SO is now resolved. THIS even included the taste aspect whereby now the D is sweet, the SD is savoury but not overshadowing the D because it is just 1 and the light fruity taste from the pomegranate makes whole taste composition interesting.
  2. The red pomegranate didn’t get lost in composition even though it was small due to its colour.
  3. In general, it looks more cleaner and general more aesthetically pleasing.

TWIG

This was the twig I used. It was a relatively long twig placed in the ratio of 1:2 in relation to the dish.

This was because

RESEARCH FOR IKEBANA

I wanted to bring out the rather horizontal layout of my composition but tweak it to make it more interesting by putting it at an angle to the dish. Not going to lie, I am also very inspired by Cheryl’s long twig example haha. I also referenced a few other arrangements.

PLATING/PRESENTATION

With reference back to the quote, we decided to present ours with an orange warmth light as well as a light hearted background music to bring out the Autumn atmosphere as described. As for plating we also have crumbs to represent dried fallen leaves and honey to represent the warmth autumn twinkle.

Here’s a photo representation of Autumn babies:

Here’s a video of Autumn babies:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w7GeOCHkDZHZ0jEsws-Oqb37Zqsjg_g4/view?usp=sharing 

Hope you enjoy this documentation! Thank you for reading 🙂

Gaia Ikebana – Autumn (Part 1)

The word I chosen is Autumn.

Here are my primary 3D sketch models.

Cylinder: D

Cone: SD

Sphere: SO

  • The sphere is standing independent.
  • The cone is dependent on the sphere.
  • The cylinder is precarious to the cone.

Pros:

  1. Overall, balanced

Cons:

  1. Too symmetrical for a Ikebana composition
  2. The use of both methods: piercing and wedging may eventually fail when moving onto the food portion
  3. Sphere is already an SO yet it is still overshadowed by the Cylinder

Cone: D

Cylinder: SD

Sphere: SO

  • The cone is precarious in relation to the base
  • The cylinder is also precarious in relation to the cone
  • The sphere is dependent on the cylinder

Pros:

  1.  Relatively interesting composition
  2.  All components can be seen at all angles

Cons:

  1.  Overall, imbalanced
  2.  May become a problem when dealing with food
  3.  Lack of an independent element

Sphere: D

Cylinder: SD

Cone: SO

  • The Sphere is independent to the base
  • The Cylinder is precarious in relation to the Sphere
  • The Cone is dependent on the Cylinder (since wedged)

Pros:

  1. Overall, balanced
  2. All elements can be seen at all angles

Cons:

  1. Too symmetrical for a Ikebana composition
  2. Long structure may become a problem when dealing with food

I personally wished to revise Model 3 because out of all 3, I felt that it had the most potential to be changed considering it’s cons can be rectified without the compromise of the pros.

Model 3 Revised

 

Sphere: D

Cylinder: SD

Cone: SO

  • The Sphere is independent to the base
  • The Cylinder is precarious in relation to the Sphere
  • The Cone is dependent on the Cylinder (since wedged)

This is my final composition which I hoped to adopt to my food model.

Look out for Part 2 to see what happened!