5/6/24: Hakone Garden of the Wetlands & Lalique Museum!

When planning this trip's itinerary, we somehow thought we'd have plenty of time to stroll around both the Hakone Botanical Garden of the Wetlands and the Lalique Museum on the same day we took the bullet train from Tokyo to Odawara, picked up a rental car, and then also tour the Hakone Open Air Museum and the Pola Art Museum. If you've been following our blog for any length of time, you know we're no slouches when traveling but we missed the mark that day, and attempting all that would have been crazzzy! Therefore, we added both places to our Mt. Fuji day. 

The botanical garden, located in the Hakone-Sengokura area at 650 m elevation, was established in 1976 in a flat area containing rice paddies. You'd never know that now as it sported a specially designed ecosystem with manmade hills, rockeries, ponds, and streams.

At first glance, these looked like a purple variety of Ontario's provincial flower, the trillium, but the delicate flower was probably a butterfly plant like we'd spotted the previous day also in Hakone's mountain area.

Japan's national flower should be the rhododendron as we've noticed lovely shades of them all over the country!

The Meadow Plant Garden contained flowers seldom seen around the city so Hakone residents were in for a treat seeing grassland plants here, especially in late summer when most are blooming.

The Marsh Plant Garden was a wetland with slow-moving water and nutrient-rich groundwater with plants seen near rivers and lakes.

Steven stayed on the regular route but I just had to see what was on the Blind Alley or roundabout route!

I lucked out as the orange azaleas were lovely!

Plants of the Cliff was a small garden in the wetlands.

The Bog Area was the model for plants rarely seen in Japan.

Part of the Sengokuhara Marsh has been designated as a national monument of Japan because marshes rarely exist in lower mountain districts. The summer months are the best time to view these flowers.

The flowers were bobbing up and down thanks to carp getting entangled in the long stems!

Steven and I love boardwalks so traipsing along one in the Swamp Forest was a delight. We just didn't want to lose sight of where we were walking and end up in the drink! 

Did you know that a marsh differs from a swamp only because woody plants dominate? I hadn't. Phil: I'd just read your post about the swamp trail you encountered in Louisiana before visiting the wetlands. No doubt that one was quite different.

With more than a thousand species of wild herbaceous and woody plants collected and displayed in the Garden of the Wetlands, it was a delightful way to start our day.

I was still surprised at the handful of top museums in the Hakone area, a city we'd never heard of before planning our tour of Japan. Being a fan of Art Deco and Art Nouveau, it was a no-brainer to stop just two minutes away at the Lalique Museum which had a remarkable collection of over 1,500 pieces designed by René Jules Lalique, a world-renowned glassmaker and jeweler. Prestigious Lalique collections are on display all around the world, particularly at the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, and here in Hakone. Since being exposed to Lalique's genius at the Gulbenkian several years ago, I was excited at the opportunity to view the world's largest collection of his precious jewelry and glass masterpieces in the beautiful natural surroundings of Hakone.

The French artist, 1860-1945, is credited for bridging the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Take a few moments and feast your eyes!

When Lalique first started his career as a jeweler, he was described as bringing a fresh look to bear on jewelry, whether in terms of sources of inspiration or the materials used. He didn't balk at using materials considered less worthy, such as horn, ivory, or enamel. His research on the latter sparked Lalique's interest in glass, which had a similar composition. His Art Nouveau brooches and combs attracted great attention at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1900, after which he became a celebrated jeweler. Among his patrons was the acclaimed French actress Sarah Bernhardt, for whom he designed some of his finest creations.

Lalique created jewelry with fantastic designs with relatively few precious stones though the norm then was machine-produced jewelry featuring precious gems. His desire to create something that had never been seen before earned him the title of "inventor of modern jewelry."

Woman with Wings was fashioned in 1900.

Lalique fabricated Anemones between 1901 and 1903.

The museum was designed in complete harmony with the world around it as if the scenery were part of the exhibition space itself. It was just sublime.

I don't normally think of looking at chandeliers in public spaces but at the Lalique Museum, they also perfectly complemented the art. 

Lalique's talents even extended to Swallows, a fabulous room decorated with the migratory bird, a common subject matter in his work.

Another floor of the museum was devoted to Lalique's glass objects.

Lalique lent his expertise to car mascots. From left to right: Speed, Longchamp, and Victory were produced in 1929.

In 1907, Lalique's affinity for glass began through an association with perfumer François Coty who asked Lalique to put his talent to work for the perfume industry. Their work revolutionized it by making it possible to offer perfumes in beautiful bottles at affordable prices. According to excerpts from a biography I read, Lalique the Art Nouveau master jeweler was to become an Art Deco master glassmaker! 

1921's Degas/Dancer was of course inspired by the famous artist.

Isadora Duncan was the muse in 1931 for the perfume bottle Duncan.

I was so happy to see a museum solely devoted to the world's best interpreter of glass art and a larger breadth of Lalique's mastery of so many genres of art than even Lisbon's Gulbenkian.

Posted on May 20th, 2024, from Hiroshima, the last city on our amazing tour of Japan. What a journey it's been since arriving in the Land of the Rising Sun about three weeks ago at the beginning of our trip to Asia. I look forward to sharing more of what we saw and experienced as long as I can send posts from China, our next stop on this adventure. Please take care of yourself and your loved ones until we meet again in this space.

Next post: Same day and up close and personal with Mt. Fuji!