Happy New Year

It is the end of one year and the start of another. For many years this involved getting incredibly drunk. Now it involves very little as it is the only time of year to get some rest from bonsai...although there is lots of computer nonsense to work on.

For the new year there will be more of the same with Noelanders soon followed by Kokufu and then repotting season. In the middle of this however will be a massive event in the US. The owner of the Kennett Collection is having a huge sale, with the intention of reducing his collection down to a more manageable size. For more information, prices etc, visit the website www.thekennettcollection.com. It is a one time only chance at purchasing trees at cheaper the US at lower than Japan prices.

I will be at the sale helping out and will be on hand to give any advice. If you live in the US, then it is well worth a look.

In less interesting news, I have been in the media, the interviews i gave in November have come out. I was interviewed for a newspaper...

 

In which International Bonsai Mirai sits comfortably next to Shunkaen Bonsai Museum. The other was a magazine called "Kangaeru hito"

Or "Thinking People". Plain living and high thinking....clearly a magazine with low standards.

I even shaved for the occasion...the Saruyama brand gets pride of place here...even making an appearance in the interview below which is entitled "Objective is artless art". Or in my case artless sideburns.

A translation may follow at some point.

Looking forward to the new year? It is coming soon. All the best and expect nothing but the same from here :)

 

An end of year silence...

I will stop apologising for the lack of blog posts, but it has been asked if I am still alive. I can confirm that I am, although sometimes getting out of bed is diffiicult. Since coming back from japan I have been busy sorting out the garden for winter, a trip down to the back of beyond in Cornwall to fix some trees that Reg Kimura styled :) and also been busy finishing off photoshoots and writing the text for the upcoming book I have been asked to write. Things are coming together now and text is being written...

Here are the project pages. Obviously it will be published in book format rather than A4 stuck to a wall format. Writing the text for the back section on care is taking ages...especially as I want the information to be more detailed than "water daily". Bonsai as you should know by now, is more complicated than that.

Here are some tools...wonder if i can get a sponsorship deal from Dremel?

Was going to cut this branch off but Chairman John said no. (For those without a sense of humor, this is a joke)

To be perfectly honest, the thought of trying to follow in the footsteps of one of the greatest UK bonsai professionals is a little daunting. A massive proportion of current UK bonsai enthusiasts would have started or been inspired by Harry Tomlinsons book and there are parts of it that are still entirely relevant today. The wiring diagrams for example are still a go to guide for reference.

It is due to published May time next year so I will have to get on with writing it...

Well, Now the calendar's just one page and, of course, I am excited...no picture of our christmas tree this year, so instead the new (old) mascot of Saruyama is here to send my best wishes and hopes for the new year to you all. Happy Holidays and see you at Noelanders.

 

An interesting display at the Choseki kai

During the Taikanten there is also a suiseki exhibition held at Kennin-ji arranged by the Choseki-kai, a group of very serious enthusiasts in the Kansai area.

It is always a worthwhile trip just to hang out in the temple for an hour or two away from the bustle of the Taikanten. Please note that I would never be capable of taking these pictures. Google Images I thank you...

The stones on show were varied and interesting. This was a surprise to see...

The suiban is something I have never before seen before. I asked someone who said he knows and he reckoned that apparently it represents a zen koan, describing the futility of struggle within the human realm of existence. There is an old fable in which some learned old men get drunk on night and try to move a massive vat of water. Rather than empty it first and make it empty, they try to turn it round and spin it to move it. As hard as they tried, they got nowhere....four of them were trying to spin it clockwise and four were trying to spin it counter clockwise. Despite their struggle and ultimately realising that it had been entirely in vain, they fell on the floor laughing.

There was more to the story and it may or may not have been the basis for the Monty Python song, "Always look on the bright side"...because as we all know, when you look at it, lifes a piece of...

 

The above text may or may not have any basis in truth. The author cannot be held responsible for any further distribution of the above text which may be misconstrued and then repeated, thus becoming gospel truth, leading to 50 years of misunderstanding about the basic principles of suiseki or bonsai, simply because they learnt it from a book. (For those who still cannot read between the lines...I MADE IT UP, it's just some weird display, nothing more).

Apart from that display, there were plenty of others including this one with a lovely table. Perhaps now Doug Mudd has had his fingers sown back on, he might like to try his miracle hand at this?

Funky edges and great wood...

Mmmm.

In terms of the show, there are plenty of pics elsewhere on the internet, notably Bill Valavanis' blog, so I won't bother wasting more bandwidth on them.

What I will say is that I had a few interesting conversations with Mr. Morimae, over a Cinzano Rosso no less, about the future of bonsai and his plans. It was a...convergence of ideas. Watch this contemporary space...

 

And on a similar theme, there was this modern display at the exhibition which ranged from the downright ghastly...

I don't mean Bill, I mean these monstrosities...

But then they had these pretty interesting iron stands...again, shame about the trees.

 

And these...

Rock and roll...

It was a fairly successful trip for me, which is yet to finish, but I managed to pick up one super pimp stand, a few pots for clients and one for myself. Tomorrow back to Tokyo hopefully...

Please do not take what I say too seriously...I am deeply interested in suiseki and the world will be rocked next february when the big show is on alongside the kokufu...now that I am looking forwards to...

 

A fungal education...

Although the last week has been intensely busy with the very well received exhibition, Natural Flux, i still found time to learn something new. Thanks to Yannick Kiggen, who came over from his native Belgium, I was up at a ridiculously early time on Sunday morning to drive him to Stansted for a Ryanair flight home. yannick was a great help with the show, especially on the late night preview evening, with his manly looks and general all round willingness to pitch in and wash glasses. My deepest thanks were repaid in a small part with a fried breakfast of the highest quality.

Thank you Pellici's of Bethnal Green for showing him the pinnacle of British cuisine.

Anyway, the early morning start was not a problem and in fact turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I was able to listen to a very good Radio 4 program on the way back about fairy rings and the importance of fungi in the ecosystem. The repetition of the fact that without symbiotic fungi, most trees, plants and life in general could not thrive was drilled into the listener along with some other interesting facts such as different types of mycelium which have territorial wars and that they are a one directional species. For those of you who can access the BBC iPlayer, I would recommend listening to the documentary. For those that live outside of the UK, I can only apologise and would suggest moving here (or use a VPN). Either that or read about fungi.

What impact does this new knowledge, or rather a reinforcing of existing knowledge have? It simply validates the absolute priority for developing a healthy biological system within out bonsai pots, be they contemporary or not. Using a good quality organic bonsai fertiliser will help with that. Chemicals can throw off the balance, sterilise the soil and cause unhealthy but seemingly vigorous growth. Maintaining a healthy balance between water and oxygen will help maintain the biological system even further. Careful use of fungicide on the top of the tree only will help.

Essentially, do not consider the pot and it's contents as some kind of inert system. Good bonsai practice and horticultural success starts with the roots and consideration of what is happening and what you want to happen.

Back to the gallery and with a sad heart/relief, the closing of the first Natural Flux exhibition.

 

It has been a long time coming...

but now the natural flux show is finally set up and ready to rock and roll.  the last month has seen me as busy as usual, hence the silence.  Setting up the show was a marathon task, getting pots, tables, mossing trees by torchlight all in a desperate rush to get finished before going off to LA for the GSBF, which was a blast.

Returning yesterday the last finishing touches were made and all that was necessary was to put it all in to the gallery.  Despite his constant snide comments, Mr. Peter Snart of Willowbog Bonsai has been a massive massive help to me, not only in this venture, but many others.  Without him, today would not have gone smoothly at all, so I am indebted to him for braving the London traffic and putting up with my harebrained ideas and lack of planning.  Despite us having known each other for many years, he still doesn't get the fact that I prefer to have fluid plans and ideas.  Also known as winging it.  That said, thank you Peter.

A few pictures from throughout the day...

The empty gallery, waiting to be filled

Snarty, doing what he does best. Drinking tea and making fun of me

Men at work...You better run, you better take cover

"What on earth does he expect me to do?"

That needs turning around son.

Thor and his incredible machine...

A handheld Dyson always, and I mean always, comes in useful with bonsai.

Shin-kun setting up his awesome photographs.  Someone who has a plan...

What was I thinking?

All in all it has turned out as I had hoped, in fact better than I had hoped.  Tomorrow morning we need to do a few things to finish off.  Unfortunately Kevin Bielicki was delayed coming in, so his pieces will be put up tomorrow. Check in to either here, www.naturalflux.co.uk or https://www.facebook.com/naturalfluxbonsai

Now...to bed.

He even gets on TV here...

A very random televisual appearance for The Chief last night, with a headline appearance on BBC Comedy Show "Have I Got News For You". Rather bizarrely they featured Bonsai Focus as their guest publication and so I was expecting plenty of bad puns and offensive jokes but it was a bit of a damp squib to be fair. Maybe they edited it to death and it was all unsuitable. Only one headline appeared...

With a truly horrifying image created by the otherwise excellent Paul Merton, claiming the missing blanks read "lying on top of Mrs. Kobayashi". I shudder to imagine...

Sadly the correct answer was

Which is something I must have translated at some point but cannot remember what.

As if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth...

Anyway, truly random. Would be interesting to hear why they chose that magazine...I will have to get a video of it and show The Chief some day.

 

A nest of sorts...

Every now and again something new pops up and surprises me with Bonsai. This week it has been a witches broom of the highest order, a Nimbus 2000 if you will. As is becoming customary at this time of year I find myself fighting the good fight against a never ending sea of satsuki. It is the season for an autumnal prune/removal of unnecessary new growth and also wiring. One tree I worked on today had this growth on it.

A grotesque lump of misshapen and stunted shoots, also known as a witches broom. I personally prefer the Japanese name tengusu byou or "Tengu nest disease". (Careful reading is required here, do not mistake the "u" for an "a"). If you don't know the Tengu is a mythical creature, half devil, half bird of prey in Japanese folklore. He is pretty scary and he obviously likes to make nests in azaleas (not as scary)

Tengu

Aside from the interesting cultural divide over naming deformed plant growth, what caused it? In the case of azaleas, it is almost certainly damage from insects. I have previously seen just very small amount of Tengu Nests in azaleas and The Chief always told me that it was down to Thrips...but there are other culprits which cause it and other damage such as the Clinodiplosis rhododendri (Felt), or it's street name of Rhododendron gall midge which causes damage by eating leaves and shoots. A fearsome beast as you can see...

Other evidence of this little blighter was found

Leaves that had been eaten.

So how to control or prevent? Spray with an insecticide on a regular basis during the growing season for new shoots. They are not difficult to kill off, but timing is key. Once they or their larvae get into the shoots then this can happen

If you have it, cut if off and get rid of it, spray for any remaining bugs and stay on top of it.

Some witches brooms make great new species deal for bonsai, others just look ugly. At least it has a funky name.

Onwards and upwards

 

Bonsai aka Bonzai aka Banzai Trees

Just a quick post as I am frantically trying to squeeze three days work into one, but I had a great trip to Norn Iron to visit the Bonsai eejit and the NIBS Crew.  full details can be found here if you haven't already seen them... there are plenty of posts and pictures there.

The post title refers to the name we were given at the Belfast Parks show I was taken to help set up...and also from this awesome video. Not sure if anyone has posted this before but the preview alone is worth a look.  I may even buy the whole thing.

BONSAI TREES aka BONZAI TREES

Looking at the video, there are some incredible antique Chinese and Japanese pots there...I wonder where they have gone to?  At the time they would have cost very little, the Japanese still in post war economic depression and not valuing what they had, but now...  A great video nevertheless.  Rock on British Pathe.

A full month of work is ahead of me, trips all over including Willowbog and Florida.  I wonder which will have the nicer weather? I know which will have the nicer fried breakfast....

A rare occasion...

It generally doesn't happen that often, but every now and again, it pays to step back and smell the roses.  I have found that it does wonders for the private parts of life and it also allows you to see everyday things differently.  Yes dear readers, I took a holiday.  I won't overshare too much with you but these are the holiday snaps of a bonsai professional...a very sad one.

Incredible textured wood, weathered from hundreds of years exposed to the elements...

No real reason for it to grow like that.  It just got it's groove on at an early age

A weird textured landscape.  Like a Chinese "suiseki", as natural as Cheez Whiz

Big Bad Ass Pine, dominating the skyline

A rare sighting.

So that's what windswept branches look like...

A perfect Shima-gata suiseki...

The autumn season kicks off in earnest from err...tomorrow. It is going to be non stop until Christmas with trips to Belfast, Willowbog, the US (twice), Poland, Japan and Cornwall all to squeeze in around some stupid exhibition I decided to do..(.http://naturalflux.co.uk/ if you didn't know).

Expect some updates along the way...

One of the projects...

The last couple of days have been spent up to my eyes in Lemsip and tissues after a particularly annoying throat infection. That will teach me to work hard...

It has however given me the opportunity to finish off a little bit of work on an upcoming project which is now going to be unveiled. I had mentioned that I had a few things on the go and here is one of them. Full details can be found at the website... www.naturalflux.co.uk  but basically I am doing a kind of solo, kind of collaborative exhibition to be held in a contemporary art gallery just off of Brick Lane in East London. It will be a combination of trees, ceramics, blacksmithery, sculpture and photography. Should be quite interesting.

 I won't go on about it too much here, but please take a look at the website and please  follow on facebook

https://www.facebook.com/naturalfluxbonsai

(as I don't really do or get facebook at all, please can you do what ever it is facebook does)  I will be putting some more information up as things get a little closer to the date, but as things stand, everything is still in the works.  Hopefully it will all come together, some of the pieces made are already incredible and my trees are well...still alive, so that is a bonus.

The exhibition will be on the 6th to 11th November, possibly the first of many, depends on how it all goes.

This was all my idea, I approached the gallery and all the other artists who have been super enthusiastic about it, but it is basically my folly, an experiment to see where we can take bonsai and who will like it.  It will help to answer a few questions I have about bonsai and modern life anyway.

Sink or swim...

Now I need to finish my accounts...

ps. if anyone finds anything funny or weird looking on the website, let me know. I haven't totally tested it out on different browers and stuff. It works on my computer and ipad.

Are you bored yet?

It feels as though it is taking as long to write about the trip as it took to actually do it. It's at the halfway point now where you have started and just have to finish, but you still are nowhere near the summit and you wondered what the hell were you smoking before you started....a bit like I felt in the third year of my degree and the third year of my apprenticeship...and come to think of it the third year of my solo career.

So thankfully, the guiding influence who got me through the third year rocky patch for the last two is coming up now. A trip to the garden of Akiyama-en, home to Minoru Akiyama, my senpai, elder brother and friend; and his father, Mr. Akiyama who is a pretty cool dude himself.

Akiyama-en shares some similarities with the Iura garden, the father was/is a massive enthusiast who got into the professional side of things on a yamadori front, and the son got sent off to apprentice under masters so that they can refine the work they started. Akiyama studied at Shunkaen under the Chief after leaving high school, and Iura studied under Kawabe, well known for his craftsmanlike skills and obsessive nature. Both sons are now established artists in their own right and have their ideas of how to run things, but whilst their fathers are still active, this can often be a source of disagreement.

Here he is stood next to a giant white pine. His father likes big trees...

Here is Akiyama's first Sakkafu-ten Prime Minister's award winning tree. Originally a piece of material prepared and grafted by his father, Akiyama refined and finished it during the first years of his solo career, becoming the youngest winner of the award at the age of 29.

And here is the second award winning tree. I can claim a tiny influence on this tree, I wired half of it and helped with the discussion of it's styling...and when I say helped, it was one of those reinforcing the reasons for a decision already made. Still we wired it and styled it, finishing on New Years Eve a few years back. I had a few shandies that night...

Anyway, back on track. For the eagle eyed amongst you will be slightly perplexed as to the difference in foliage compactness between the Akiyama junipers above and the Iura junipers we saw early. Surely somebody is noticing that...or is it just me?

There is a reminder of Iura's lovely juniper. Can you see the difference? Both are Itoigawa Junipers, but both are as different as chalk and cheese. Itoigawa is used as a catch-all name for compact foliage types which were found in the Niigata area, particularly around the Itoigawa river, but they were sold in a specific place on the river and hence the name stuck. The genetic difference between the original trees was subtle but vast and the modern idea of Itoigawa comes from just one or two heavily used variants. Many "Itoigawa" junipers were grafted originally and as there are only a small number of places that do so, the foliage has become quite specific. In a previous post I mentioned this with regards to Reg Kimura and the type he uses which grows rapidly, as does the Iura foliage. A number of years ago the Iura garden changed the type of foliage it used for grafting, although you wouldn't recognise it as it looks identical but has different genetic traits. Te type used by Akiyama-en is slow growing but tends to bunch up and grow in balls.

(I will say that the Iura juniper has recently been grafted and so it being grown out, hence the shaggy appearance, but my point is still valid)

This very specific concept of the ideal foliage and being able to change bad foliage is something which took the Japanese Bonsai community around 100 years to perfect. In the West we are just on the starting point for working with our native junipers. To think that we won't have to go through a similar process is folly and those haters of Rocky Mountain Junipers in the US or Sabinas in Europe simply lack the understanding of the difficulty of working with collected material. Here we see two nurseries that have taken a generation to see a piece of collected material through to fruition. We in the west must take things a little more slowly and understand the difficulty in finding good foliage.

Personally I think that there are Sabina and RMJ out there with perfect Itoigawa-esque characteristics...strong, compact and do not flower. I think I may have one but it will be three seasons before I can be sure. Some people like the Japanese Itoigawa and graft it on to Sabina and RMJ or ther native trees. I have seen some great examples of this being successful but think it a question of personal aesthetics and at the moment I am searching for the ideal native foliage to graft on native trees (hey..we live in Europe, sabinas are native to Europe) rather than make everything look the same...but I guess thats because I studied in Japan where everything is cookie cutter...

Anyway, back to the trees...

Another lovely collected juniper. A few years from grafting it is ready for refinement and will be show ready in a few years.

Natural deadwood and shed loads of fertiliser...

Remember this bad boy from Kokufu? The grafts were unsucessful...the reason being that the tree was not strong enough. The underlying natural foliage must be vibrant and healthy for grafting to work.

Fallen soldiers...

Goodbye to his two daughters and wife...they are lovely girls and know how to work their Uncle Peter.

Akiyama also likes Chojubai but they seem to not be selling too well recently. With a little work this will be Kokufu class and is a very reasonable price. The terracotta pot makes a massive mental difference for buyers.

Now this is a funky one...the pot that is.

Ok...I have to run to an appointment now, so I will finish up here. It's dragging out over time but there are ny two more days left...Tokyo and Saitama!