Bonsai from Australia.
Been busy as per usual but I have managed time to fit in a couple of customer trees.
Below is a quick before and after of a black pine that needed teasing out of a sea of needles. A fun tree to style.
Before
The after shot is a little lacking in quality but I am sure you get the idea.
After a day or so work.
As the days get cooler we slowly approach the time of year where I like to style conifers. This year is gearing up to be a big one for bonsai work as I have taken on a number of customers trees to be styled. Following on from the last Black Pine I worked on, I had the opportunity to work on a similar tree.
Before starting the work.
At least it looked similar before the work begun, but soon after the old needles were removed a new set of structural challenged presented themselves to be solved.
Old needles removed and ready for pruning and styling. (slightly rotated)
I decided to rotate the front slightly which brought up the issue of the first branch. That is it was now heading towards the rear of the tree so with the help of a screw in the trunk I was able to bend it forwards. This then set the base of the tree and the rest of the canopy could be built around it. The head was finally lowered and rounded out to create the final image.
After the work.
Again this tree now needs a couple of years to grow into its new shape but even after the couple of weeks that passed between starting the job and finishing, new buds are beginning to form which should see this tree become show-able in the not too distant future.
While in Japan I worked on a number of trees which might make it to future posts.
One such tree was a bunjin style white pine that had been bought by the nursery as part of a larger collection. It had been styled by the previous owner but with far too thin wire so it was up to me to re-wire and find a new style for the tree. Oyakata gave me free rein on the tree and so I set about working.
As the tree began, styled by its previous owner.
So I stripped the old wire, pruned some branches and wired what was left. I then started to place branches and reached a stage where i wanted to cut off some branches that would take the tree past a point of no-return. So I called Oyakata from the garden to make sure he was going to be happy with my decisions.
My styling of the tree.
It turns out what I had done was not to his liking and he proceeded to remake the branches and form a more upright tree.
The tree after Oyakata re-re-styled it.
And so that is how the tree stayed. After all it was not my tree and I certainly did the right thing by asking when I did.
That being said, did I like the end product? No, not really but I wasnt really happy with my version either. I can see why Oyakata styled it the way he did.
It is a little more regular and perhaps in that form is more easily sold (which is the name of the nursery game) and being of fairly low quality comparatively with the rest of the nursery Oyakata was probably hoping to get it sold quickly to make room for something more interesting.
Having said all that what was interesting about the exercise was to see a piece of material transformed into three totally different stylings by three different pairs of hands over the course of the day. Each person who styled it, from the previous owner, to me, finally to Oyakata saw something different in the material and I think it is that difference in how each of us treats our trees that keeps this art interesting and keeps me turning up to demonstrations, shows and events.
Perhaps this material much like all others has no one perfect way to be styled but instead many different forms that play to different tastes.
Things have been pretty busy since I got back from Japan. A new job, a pregnant wife and Autumn’s bonsai work just beginning haven’t left a lot of time for the blog.
On top of this, I have also been doing a fair amount of work on customer’s bonsai and their collections. Some of this work is routine seasonal maintenance, some of it teaching and then some of it is re-styling.
Before any work
One such re-styling I completed recently was the black pine pictured above. For Australia, the black pine had some good age to it and was starting to develop nice bark textures, but it’s canopy had grown into a solid blob over the years. My job was to find the tree within the blob. I had to prune a large number of branches out and define a better branch structure to set the tree up for it’s future. As a result a fair amount was cut off the tree but now the bones have been formed to grow a better structure upon.
After pruning and wiring.
One of the main changes, apart from separating the foliage into layers was to enhance the movement of the tree. This involved shortening the right side and lowering the head to accentuate the left movement of the main branch which made a huge difference to the appearance of the tree.
I think a re-pot into something more suitable and a year or two of candle pruning should see this tree fill into a very nice tree.
Part two.
I’ve been a little slow on processing these images but better late than never. Below is the first half of the conifers from the Taikan-ten. The second half should be along shortly and then we will be back to regular programming. Until then… Enjoy.
As expected there were some truely spectacular deciduous trees on display.
I have developed a healthy obsession with the dwarf flowering quince ‘Chojubai’. While looking over my photos this became very evident as I had taken photos of many of them even if they were merely being used as accents. I am sure that if you look over the below images you can see why I enjoy them so much.
I am slowly making my way through processing all the pictures I took at the Taikan-ten last year and thought I would start things off on the blog with a couple of the shohin displays that were on offer at the exhibition. Over the coming weeks I will add more of the larger trees, accents and displays themselves as I process them.
Enjoy
Nichigo Bonsai 