bonsai ceramics

Bonsai ceramics is a topic I have been learning about more and more recently. I remember buying my first tokoname pot back in Indiana and paying, what at the time seamed like an exorbitant amount of money. Back then I did not have any suitable trees, but for some reason I really wanted that particular pot. Maybe because it would have been the first bonsai related thing I would own that was made in Japan. The sad thing is that this particular pot later broke during a workshop with Owen Reich, and turns out I don't even have a picture of it. But, I am now an official pot collector, or maybe pot hoarder.

There is a lot of information you can find on the web about bonsai pots. My favorite sources are http://japanesebonsaipots.net/ and http://samedge.wordpress.com/. Those two blogs are full of amazing information. And, btw, not all of this information is about the pots I will never have, don't have at this time, or are too expensive for us mortals. Here is an example http://japanesebonsaipots.net/2013/03/07/hokido/ (and I have a couple of the pots by Hokido! and they are not too expensive.)

Most of my education happened in conversations with Peter Tea and Ryan Bell (the owner of http://japanesebonsaipots.net/). Ryan has been great with helping to identify different pot makers from the chops and signatures as well - you can contact him on facebook. Mr. Tanaka, the owner of Aichi-en in Nagoya, and the man I (undeservedly for me) refer to as Oyakata, taught me a bunch as well. Over the last two years I have learned a lot and amassed a large (for my standards) collection of inexpensive pots, mainly Japanese, most from Tokoname region, which is close to Nagoya.

So here is what I learned. Pots are important. After all bonsai is a tree in a pot and harmony is important not just for the tree but the tree AND the pot. An old tree in a new pot looks out of place. A feminine tree in a ragged pot looks strange and unbalanced. The basics of aesthetics that apply to trees apply to pots. The way to communicate those aesthetics is a little different. For example, the age of trees is communicated via bark for pines and dead wood for junipers, but patina for pots. Patina is a residue resulting from years of use that accumulates on the surface of the pots. Here is an example of patina

This pot used to be completely white and shiny. A tree in an old pot looks older, even if it is being completely redeveloped like this trident maple is.

The basics of pot selection for trees are very simple. Use unglazed pots for conifers and glazed for deciduous or broad leaf evergreens. Use masculine pots for masculine trees, heavy pots for heavy trees, rough looking pots for rough looking trees, etc. But the more comfortable you feel with the subject the more tricky it gets. I have seen combinations that at first sight should not work together at all, but would blow you away. For example, a literati (bunjin) trident maple in an unglazed bunjin pot!

My simple classification of shapes is as follows. Ovals are the softest, and shapes get harder as you add angles and corners. Round pots, however, are usually reserved to literati or bunjin trees. So rectangular pot with soft corners is next to oval. Then rectangular and square. The hard pots are the ones that have sharp corners like this one (notice how strong the tree is - it belongs to Boon).

Another topic is quality and age. For a while I thought that Tokoname is as good as it gets, while Chinese pots are low quality. It gets harder. The basic rules are, well, I am not sure there are many. There more I know there more I don't know and the only advice I can give people is to get as much information as they can and decide for themselves. Recently Chinese pots are getting better and are not as likely to break when frozen. At the same time there is a wide variety of Tokoname pots and hand made pots are considered higher quality than machine made pots. I like thinner pots all other things held equal, because they are lighter. I have two pots that look almost identical, one is Chinese and the other is from Yamafusa maker in Tokoname (probably machine made even though it is sighned) and the Yamafusa is much lighter.

Quality of materials used is also very important. Quality of clay as well as quality of glaze. My favorite glazed pots are the once that have multiple colors or glazes that change color when fired. Here is an example of a Koyo made Namako (or see cucumber) pot that was gifted to me by a dear friend (thank you). Note the differences in color all coming from the same glaze.

One of the questions I was once asked by a bonsai professional in Japan was "Why Americans like Yamaki pots so much?" Yamaki is one of the tokoname pot makers. And my answer was that they make good quality inexpensive pots and you can sometimes find those with reasonable age and patina without having to pay a thousand dollars. But that question lead me to think that there are many levels of quality out there and Yamaki is just one of them. Here is two examples of Yamaki pots.

I am sure I have left out many if not most topics, but I am hoping that whoever reads this blog will want to learn more, seek out the information and then share it with the rest of us.