苔玉;Koke-Dama(Moss Ball)is decorated as a part of Japanese WABI-SABI taste interior.
The plant root is enwrapped spherically in soil and pasted green moss with a thread and wire for fix.
It’s simply modern BONSAI.
To those who only pray for the cherries to bloom,
How I wish to show the spring
That gleams from a patch of green
In the midst of the snow-covered mountain-village!
(藤原 家隆 英訳詩)
WABI really means “’Poverty” ,or, negatively, “Not to be in or with fashionable society of the time”.
To be poor, that is, not to be depending on things worldlyーwealth, power, and reputation, and yet to feel inwardly the presence in oneself of something which is of the highest value above time and social positionーthis is what essentially constitutes WABI.
When the beauty of imperfection is accompanied by antiquity or primitive uncouthness, we have a glimpse of SABI, so prized by Japanese connoisseurs.