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.

First big bend

I have been itching to try and make a big bend on a tree for a while, but since my trees were not ready for it I had to wait. And I HATE wait, but bonsai is good for teaching one patience.

So today I decided it is the time to start. One of my Virginia Pines is the subject. Here are the pictures before and after.

But, in between there was a lot of work. Unfortunately, I was doing it by myself so I had to figure out how to bend and tighten wires alone. Here is the "process pictures".

I should explain the first picture. I did not have a piece of ribar long anough to do the bends so I use a broom stick which did the job. Also, before I did anything I tied the tree to a piece of 2x6 with stainless steel wire. Two reasons for it. First, I needed to tie the tree down better. Second, I did not want to damage the pot (it is a sign Yamaki pot) so the pressure is on the wood instead of the pot.

Then I set a guy wire (stainless steel is much stronger than copper and can take a lot of abuse. After I set it up I realized that I cannot push down on the tree and tighten the wire on my own so I decided to use the jack. You can see how I set up two loops from the same guy wire. It took three steps of closing the jack and resetting it until I got to the end. At some point the anchor wire started opening up so I had to close it and I added another one to make sure it did not snap. Working with stainless steel wire is hard - I used a couple of cheap pliers because wire eats up the teeth on the pliers fast.

After the bending was done I replaced the stainless steel wire with copper since it does not take as much strength to hold it in place. Also, I added a couple of guy wires to reinforce the weak points on the trunk so that the bend is distributed over the length of the trunk.

Finally, I need to thank Peter Tea for talking to me about how to make those bends and for posting about them. Also for convincing me to buy the stainless steel wire when I was visiting him in Japan. You can learn a ton from Peter's blog. Go to Post Index and read everything on Bending Technique. In addition, I need to the Juan Andrade, who is apprenticing at Aichi-en now, for all his posts on facebook and the inspiration.

Repotting Imperial Pine

Since my last post was about repotting here is the first repotting experience that I have been fortunate to be part of. I think it all took place in April 2009, but I don't have the exact date anymore. Here is the link to the article I wrote about it all.

There is so much beauty in this world. I have been very fortunate to see some of it and even more fortunate to create some of it as well. Tomorrow I am going to travel back to CA to see Bristlecone Pines. And today I worked on this image.

A few memories from Japan

In March 2013 I went back to Aichi-en. Oyakata (Junichiro Tanaka) was nice enough to let me come back, but it was Peter who had to sacrifice the most to make it happen. The thing is that there was no place for me to stay because there were already three people there: Peter (of course), Dani and Martha. So, Peter let me stay in his room. I mean we were sleeping on mats about a foot apart from each other, but no spooning took place. :)

I will be posting a lot about that trip (or at least I plan to at this point) because a lot has happened on that trip. But the first thing I want to post is the list of 23 steps to repotting that I learned. here they are:
Repotting steps:
1. Record the angle of the tree and orientation
2. Cut the wires at the bottom of the pot
3. Cut the tree out of the pot – sickle and hook.
4. Lift the tree out.
5. Lean the tree to the left and work the bottom of the tree with a rake until hit hard wood. If there are medium roots growing under the trunk cut those off (root cutter)
6. Cut the roots so that the bottom is flat (scissors)
7. When the bottom of tree is flat work the top of the root ball with a hook or bent nose tweezers
8. Remove the moss from trunks and comb out the roots
9. Cut the perimeter of the root ball so that it is one smooth line (oval or circular depending on the shape of the trunk)
10. Fluff the roots one more time and cut them from the top so that there is one continuous down sloping line at the top of the root ball. If there are high roots or small feeder roots growing on the top of the nebari cut those off
11. Put screens in the pot, wire, and find the front of the pot. When putting in the tie down wire pre-bend the wires before putting them in. the length of the wire should be two long sides and one short side.
12. Put drainage layer and some soil in the pot and position the tree
13. Check the soil level by aligning the front rim and the back rim – the tree should be slightly (quarter inch or so) above the desired height)
14. Offset the tree to depending on the direction of the trunk – if the tree is leaning left offset it to the right
15. Check the side angle – the middle of the tree should line up with the middle of the pot from the side
16. When the tree is aligned work it into the soil so that the soil level is where it is supposed to be
17. When the tree is positioned start tying the tree in. figure out where you want the last tie to be based on the hard root to tie against. If it is on the left side start from front left in counter clockwise direction.
18. Hold the trunk of the tree and pull on the front tie to tighten it and hand tie it to front right.
19. Cut off the extra wire and make the fifth tie (can be done before tying the first tie)
20. When the three hand ties are done start the last tie by hand. Pull on the wire with pliers, then press the wire down with fingers of left hand, relax right hand and close the space by tightening the wire with pliers. Pull the tie again, press with fingers and close the space by turning the tie with pliers
21. Add a little of soil around the root ball and work the soil in with a chopstick. Tap the pot, while holding the trunk, to let the soil settle.
22. Fill the pot to the rim line with soil
23. Water the tree.
24. Apply sphagnum moss (mainly for deciduous)
25. Enjoy the newly repotted tree with a cold beverage!

And this does not include that trick with a string a a weight you can see this video look at 38:00 mark (and notice Kawabe helping).

Here is a few trees I got to repot:

Oh, yeah, this tree was displayed in Kokufu a few years back.

The goals

This is my attempt at keeping track of my bonsais, development of the trees, plans and just logging what I have learned. I started doing bonsai in 2006, but did not start learning seriously until I met Rodney Clemons in 2010. My first trip to Japan took place in summer 2012. I stayed at Aichi-en and became friends with Peter Tea. I went back for repotting (and my birthday) in March 2013.

At this point my plans are to keep the number of species I work on to just the ones I already have and try to learn more and more about the few species I am already working on. At this point my main interest is in maples, two needle pines, and junipers (mainly femina since I cannot get my hands on Tosho in the US). I also have an ume and an american cherry. I plan to keep collecting Virginia pines and cherries. Also, I have a few young maples in the ground (japanese, trident, and Arakawa). I plan to keep making airlayers and developing new trees from scratch.

I hope that this is going to be a place for me to share my thoughts and experiences without judgement. A place where I can share my mistakes and plans to correct them in the future. I don't view this project as a tool for promotion or learning. The goal is just to keep a diary as a resource for me to go back to in the future and remember what I was thinking in the past.

I have put it aside for a very long time. I tried doing it in a word file, paper file, picture folder and have failed every time. So this is just another attempt at keeping myself organized. If people read it and keep me honest - great. Otherwise I will try to do it myself. I am I start now. A man much wiser than myself once said: "yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, but today is a gift. That's why they call it present." I was lucky enough to hear it (while watching Kungfu Panda - the first movie with overweight superhero).

I also noticed that I keep posting the same link to blog posts and videos that I have liked. Then a few weeks later I keep going back to find them. So I will try to keep them all in one place. Here.