Chabana Series -Spring

Part of Stewart's Chabana Series, this Spring print depicts a tea ceremony flower arrangement — chabana being the deliberately spare floral display placed in the tokonoma during chanoyu. Spring chabana traditionally favours a single seasonal stem or two — camellia (tsubaki), plum, or an early wildflower — set in a simple bamboo or ceramic vessel, and Stewart's composition almost certainly centres on such a vessel against a quiet ground. Mokuhanga is well suited to chabana: the medium's water-based pigments and absorbent [washi](/glossary/washi) reproduce the matte texture of unglazed ceramic and the soft edges of petals without the surface gloss that would contradict the wabi aesthetic of the subject. The Chabana Series places Stewart's still-life practice within the same chashitsu world as his Summer Tearoom prints, marking the seasonal calendar as a tea practitioner would. The series continues a long tradition of [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) (bird-and-flower prints) reframed through the discipline of the tea room, where every selection is a statement about season and restraint.