One of the highlights of attending the U.S. National Bonsai Exhibition, held every other year in Rochester, New York, is meeting and catching up with people from across the bonsai community. As luck would have it, Andrew Robson introduced me to Portland ceramicist Nao Tokutake at this year’s event. Nao toured the exhibition with Andrew […]
Pots
Pot selection exercise – dwarf wisteria
Earlier this week, I presented a program on repotting for the East Bay Bonsai Society. We started by covering techniques for securing trees into containers based on the numbers of holes in the pot (see “Securing” for details). Next we looked at the process with a live tree – a dwarf wisteria. After performing the […]
Pot selection exercise – contorted quince
Now that temperatures have cooled a bit, I’ve started repotting. Sometimes I return trees to the pots they were growing in, and other times I select new containers. Here are eight options I considered for a contorted flowering quince. Do you have a favorite? Pot #1 – round Yamaaki Pot #2 – unglazed Japanese Pot […]
New pot for an exposed root black pine
Just over a year ago, I reworked an exposed root black pine and started thinking about what kind of pot it could go in (see “Refining a young exposed root pine“). Exposed root black pine – December 2017 Last month I took the tree out of the pot, did some root work, and started looking […]
Roy Minarai pots at the Gafu-ten pottery competition
It was fantastic to visit a ceramics competition in Japan and see Roy Minarai of Kawauso Pottery recognized for his work. Roy took second in the glazed category for this year’s pottery competition held at the 2019 Gafu-ten exhibit held in Kyoto, Japan. Minarai display Roy entered three pots, a blue glazed mokko, a green […]