Selecting a pot for a small trident maple bonsai
For months, I’d planned on showing a small hinoki in Bay Island Bonsai’s 13th annual exhibit. The hinoki’s health took a turn for the worse and I found myself with a few weeks to prepare another tree for exhibit. I selected a deciduous tree for the exhibit – a root over rock trident maple. I last showed the tree in 2010 in a cream colored oval pot made by Sara Rayner. It was time for a change.
Trident maple – Sara Rayner pot
I brought the tree and a number of candidate pots to a Bay Island Bonsai workshop for repotting. Before selecting a new pot, I removed the tree from the pot and worked on the roots. For a complete description of the repotting process, see the series of posts beginning with”Repotting a trident maple.”
Ready for a new pot
Selecting bonsai pots for show trees is a favorite activity of mine (see “Pot selection redux” for a similar exercise with a small black pine). Here were my options.
Option #1 – Old Chinese pot
I don’t typically associate trident maples with green pots, but I happened to have several that were the right size. The above oval pot was made in China. It’s about the right size and shape for the maple, but it didn’t strike me as an interesting match.
Option #2 – Old Chinese pot
The next pot I tried was also Chinese. It’s the right size, but very shallow. Not surprisingly, the pot makes the tree look taller.
Option #3 – Japanese pot
This Japanese pot above is much newer than the two Chinese pots. It’s a good size for the tree, but it lacks the character of the older pots.
Option #4 – Sakura pot
The fourth option is a slightly darker green. The curved sides didn’t look right to me and the pot seemed a little on the big side. Next!
Option #5 – Sara Rayner
The fifth pot I looked at is another Sara Rayner pot. A bit on the small side, this pot seemed to bring out the dullness of the stone. Ideally I would like a pot that brightens the composition, but for some reason most of my small, shallow pots are shades of green.
Option #6 – Sara Rayner
The sixth pot was also from Sara Rayner. The size and shape are appropriate, but I found the stripe formed by the lip to be very strong.
Option #7 – Michael Hagedorn
The seventh pot was made by Michael Hagedorn. It’s a very useful pot. One side is a light shade of green. The other side is a darker green.
Option #8 – Michael Hagedorn
The pot is a bit deep for the tree. I think it would look best when the leaves turn color in the fall, but like the other dark-colored pots above, it brings out the darkness of the stone.
I think all of the pots are acceptable for exhibit, but some are better matched to the tree than others. I decided to go with the oldest looking pot, which happened to be the pot with the most interesting shape – the warped, old Chinese pot. Here are some close ups.
Old Chinese pot
From below – no chop
I fit what roots I could in the pot and the rest sat above the rim.
Repotting complete
To dress it up for the exhibit, I placed moss on the surface of the soil (see “Moss technique” for details).
All mossed up – as shown in BIB’s 13th annual exhibit
Because this tree is on the small side, I showed it with another tree, a Japanese black pine I grew from seed. The display would have better balanced were there a greater difference in size between the two trees, but I didn’t have another tree to accompany the maple.
Medium display – shohin black pine and chuhin trident maple
The old Chinese pot was good for the show, but it was a bit shallow for a growing pot. Not long after the exhibit I repotted it in a slightly larger pot. Which one? Pot number 3.
Pines and junipers at Meifu-ten
Pines and junipers at Meifu-ten
Central Japan will not run out of pine or juniper bonsai anytime soon. The trees below comprise about a fifth of the bonsai displayed at this year’s Meifu-ten in Nagoya, Japan. As a hobbyist exhibit, Meifu-ten shows off some of the best work done by local hobbyists and collectors. Although many of trees were prepped for the exhibit by professionals, the general quality isn’t quite what one finds at Taiken-ten or Kokufu-ten. That said, the material and much of the work is wonderful.
Cascade shimpaku on root stand
Shimpaku
Black pine
Black pine
The following six trees belong to Aichi-en customers. All of us at the nursery that week – Mr. Tanaka, the other Mr. Tanaka, Peter Tea and I, all helped pluck errant needles, wire unruly branches, oil dirty pots and arrange small tufts of moss.
Black pine – Peter Tea prep – a very nice tree
Black pine – one of the trees I helped prep for the exhibit
Black pine – the tree belongs to Mr. Tanaka, a 3rd year apprentice at Aichi-en – Peter Tea prep
Black pine – the other tree I prepped
Black pine – Peter Tea prep
White pine – Mr. Tanaka and Peter Tea wired this tree late into the evening
Black pine
White pine
Black pine
Black pine
Black pine
Black pine
Shimapaku
Red pine
Needle juniper
White pine
Black pine
The white pine below received some extra attention. It belongs to a Daiju-en customer and had been prepared for exhibit with the front as pictured below.
White pine – intended front
I placed the tree on the stand with this front but that wasn’t good enough for Mr. Tanaka, who turned the tree to the front pictured below. As it happens, the six-sided pot and six-sided stand made the change easy. What I don’t know, is what the customer thought when he saw the resulting photo or how the tree was actually displayed at the exhibit in January.
White pine as photographed
White pine
Twisty shimpaku!
Black pine
White pine
Black pine
White pine
Black pine
Black pine
Meifu-ten – Nagoya’s bonsai exhibit
Meifu-ten – Nagoya’s bonsai exhibit
Meifu-ten, one of Japan’s largest and oldest bonsai exhibits, was held January 14-16 in Nagoya. The 82 annual event contained scores of trees from all over Central Japan. Although I wasn’t able to attend, I had the opportunity to carry most of the exhibited bonsai during my visit to Japan last fall. The photographs for exhibited trees were taken in Inazawa on November 10-11, 2011. The trees’ owners – or designated professionals – showed up with trucks and vans, and a handful of us loaded and unloaded the trees for a day and a half.
An impressive load of trees
Kinbon managed the photo shoot, hiring two local contract photographers, each set up in adjacent warehouses. Peter Tea and I provided the labor for one of these.
Peter spots the trees for the next shot
The photographers indicated the order in which the trees were shot. Each owner was given a time slot ahead of time which helped us manage the workflow. After setting up a display, we stood back and watched the photographer work. He began by making an index shot with a DSLR to check the lighting. These shots included a numbered card to help them track information about each tree. He then took 3-5 shots with a medium camera shooting film! A Kinbon staffer recorded the tree variety, height, pot maker and owner for each shot.
Number 115 – needle juniper
The work proved surprisingly fun. We got to see an exhibit up close, and we had time to consider each tree. Some were outstanding – others made it clear that this was an exhibit for hobbyists. All told, it was a good mix of trees.
Gardenia
Japanese maple
Needle juniper
Apart from the few trees that arrived in trucks chock-full of bonsai, every other tree I carried arrived in a van. Japanese bonsai professionals seem to drive vans exclusively, and of these, the Toyota Hiace was one the more popular models. Following the general automotive fashion I witnessed in Japan, most were black, white or grey. The shot below captures atypical variety in van color and style.
Bonsaimobiles
Occasionally, Peter Tea and I learned a bit about the trees we handled. The red maple below, Acer palmatum ‘Seigen,’ was developed at Aichi-en. It’s an extraordinary example of the variety.
Japanese maple – ‘Seigen’
Great trunk and roots
We also had a chance to think about how the trees were displayed. Medium displays typically featured a larger tree and a smaller, a conifer and a deciduous or broadleaf evergreen tree. Some made great pairings.
Japanese maple and Japanese white pine
Close-up of the maple
Needle juniper on root stand
Japanese black pine and trident maple
Pine and broadleaf evergreen with fruit
The remaining trees were pleasant on their own.
Japanese maple
Japanese maple
Cryptomeria
Trident maple
Chinese quince – great ramification
Shohin display
Shohin display
Cypress
Kinzu – wild kumquat
Broadleaf evergreen
Japanese beech
Peter Tea provided a nice write-up of the event – see his post, “82nd Meifu-ten Bonsai Show.”
The 2011 Sakufu-ten
I had long been curious about the Sakufu-ten. I’d visited Kokufu and seen the books from past Sakufu-ten, but didn’t know much about the event beyond that.
Toward the end of my visit to Japan, I learned that my flight home was scheduled for the same weekend as Sakufu. Not only did I not want to miss the event, but my ride to the airport, Junichiro Tanaka, was scheduled to be in Tokyo the same day, receiving the award for top large conifer. Before the day was out, I’d changed my flight. I was going to Tokyo.
The drive from Nagoya filled about half a day. Upon arriving in Tokyo, the three of us, Tanaka, Peter Tea and I, headed straight to the Green Club to set up Tanaka’s tree. Everyone else had set up their display before lunch – we arrived just before sundown. We walked past many beautiful displays with tree and stand in hand and found an empty display on the second floor with a photo featuring a familiar white pine. As soon as the tree stopped teetering on its stand, Peter and I took in the rest of the exhibit.
It was getting chilly when we headed to our hotel about a mile away. We checked in, relaxed for a bit, then headed out for dinner in Ueno. Dinner was a fantastic affair that entailed many delicacies that we could not identify. Sometimes it’s better that way.
Korean hornbeam with spectacularly dense branches
Cypress
Black pine
Spruce
Trident maple
White pine on a rock
Japanese maple – very good trunk
White pine
Satsuki azalea
Japanese flowering quince, ‘Chojubai’
Japanese pepper tree
White pine
Very old pot
Satsuki azalea
White pine
Shimpaku
Black pine
Jasmine
White pine
Shimpaku rock planting by Kimura
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