Kathmandu revisited | Bangkok Post: lifestyle

FLORALJOURNEY

I still fondly remember my first visit to Nepal. I was so happy and so inspired that I made another 15 trips after that. I like everything Nepalese _ the people, the handicrafts, the rugs, the Tibetan paintings, the chanting of the monks, the art and the architecture. I enjoy any traditional Asian bronze items, but the Nepalese pieces that always have a special place in my heart are the bronze oil lamps shaped as Shiva temples that one would see displayed in museums, hung in temples, or sold in bronze and antique shops everywhere in Kathmandu Valley.

I love the design of these traditional Nepalese oil lamps so dearly that they inspired me to create my contemporary hanging candle holder many years ago. I called it Kathmandu as my memento of that very special place. In my original design, instead of traditional oil lamps, I used cubic glass receptacles to hold the candles, and I simplified the miniature temple to its beautiful outline by using sheets of brass welded together.

For today's special Floral Journey, I would like to invite you to visit Nepal with me by using Kathmandu as the structure for my floral decoration. To begin, I bend one end of a piece of thin wire to create a hook. Then I measure the length of the wire with a leaf of a hoya plant. I cut the wire longer than the length of leaf _ long enough to pierce two blossoms of Rangoon creeper. Then, from the front, I pierce through the base of the leaf with the piece of wire that I prepared. After that, I turn the leaf over and continue to pierce the wire through the tip of the leaf.