ENLARGE PHOTO Antoinette Drouart explains Ikebana in her shop specializing in the art on West Pearl Street in Nashua.

Antoinette Drouart wants to people to stop and arrange the flowers.

Drouart, a French professor at Rivier College, has opened Ikebana Flower at 95 West Pearl St. in Nashua, where she teaches classes on Japanese flower arrangement and sells vases and unusual flowers such as protea.

Ikebana, which means “living flowers,” is the ancient Japanese art of arranging flowers that encourages expression and harmony and provides a soothing experience.

Unlike Western flower arrangements, few flowers are used and branches are included.

“Less is more,” explained Drouart, a certified Ikebana “sensei,” or teacher, who trained for five years at the Sogetsu School of Ikebana, a popular Ikebana flower-arrangement school in Japan.

Ikebana started with the Buddist monks in China as a religious offering to their gods and was later brought over to Japan, Drouart said. The first teachers were men.

By the 17th century, Ikebana started being used in tea ceremonies. There, a flower arrangement that fit the particular season was placed on a reed-mat floor in an alcove decorated with a hanging scroll.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Ikebana started to become a part of the lives of all Japanese, who brought arrangements into their homes.

Today, it’s gaining popularity all over the world.

“It’s a three-dimensional art in its basic form,” said Drouart, sitting in a chair in her cozy yellow and purple store where a soothing water fountain adds to the tranquil atmosphere.

Three major stems make up an Ikebana arrangement. The longest is the “shin,” the second is the “soe,” and the third is the “hikae,” which is usually a flower.

Asian or exotic flowers are usually used, but they can be flowers from your backyard, Drouart said.

“Ikebana is using your branches and making them as important as the flower. Branches can be from your backyard. Dead branches, live branches, but always fresh or dried, never plastic or silk.”

The vase, or container, is just as important as the flowers and branches, Drouart said.

“I could give the same branches and flowers and the same containers to 10 students and everyone’s arrangement comes out different,” Drouart said.

Students all use the same material and follow the same rules. For an arrangement to be considered Ikebana, the shin must measure 1½ times the container; the soe must be 2/3 the size of the shin; and the hikae should be ½ to ¾ the size of the soe.

Those are just the basics.

“You can move to freestyle, which looks easy to do, but you must learn, through the basics, the control of your material to create your feeling,” Drouart said.

Drouart first became interested in Ikebana when she and her husband, Eric, the assistant professor and chairman of the Business Administration Department at Rivier, moved to Japan several years ago.

There, she took Ikebana classes because they were taught in Japanese.

“When I first went there, I didn’t know the language at all,” she said. “I’m a firm believer that the way to learn a language is to totally immerse yourself.

“I liked the peacefulness and that harmony that existed while we were trying to create our own arrangements.”

She decided to get certified in teaching Ikebana, which required five years of study and earning four certificates.

“It’s very intense,” she said.

Drouart, who has designed Ikebana arrangements for Japanese restaurants in France, is a member of Ikebana International, a 9,000 member worldwide group that that holds monthly workshops on promoting the understanding of Ikebana.

“Japanese believe that in anything . . . you can’t stop learning, you must continue learning,” she said. “Education is continuous.”

When they moved back to the states in 2000, she was asked to teach an Ikebana class to the senior citizens at the Rivier Institute for Senior Education.

Then she branched out on her own, renting a classroom at a flower shop on Broad Street. She currently has about 40 students.

“To have them come in and only have the Western vision of what an arrangement is, and to look at a Japanese arrangement and say, ‘I’ll never be able to do this,’ and to see them progress in 10 lessons where their whole inner peace and harmony changes . . . that’s really what started me going.”

After renting a classroom at a Broad Street flower shop for four years, she stumbled upon the West Pearl Street location, which used to house AT&T Wireless.

“Many of my students said I should have my own place,” she said.

A grand opening celebration will be held Thursday from 5 p.m.-8 p.m. at the shop.

The store is open Wednesday and Saturday afternoons and Thursday and Friday evenings.

Classes will begin Sept. 22 and cost $100 for five weeks of two-hour classes. Classes will be held on Wednesday afternoons and Thursday mornings and afternoons. For more information, call 595-8877.

ENLARGE PHOTO Staff photos by Don Himsel Antoinette Drouart has opened a store featuring Ikebana, a Japanese art involving arranging live, seasonal flowers. Among the flowers she uses are orchids. Order this photo

Karen Spiller can be reached at 594-6446 or spillerk@telegraph-nh.com.