This radically eccentric California juniper was donated to the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum by Harry Hirao (Mr. California Juniper). It is only a small part of a wonderful collection of world class bonsai that you’ll find at the Museum. A visit every bonsai enthusiast (especially those of us in north America) would do well to consider.
Did Harry play a practical joke?
The taper is all wrong and the trunk forms a crazy upside down U shape. Did Harry play a practical joke on the National Museum?
Or, I am pulling your leg?
It looks a bit like something out of a coyote and the road runner cartoon. Maybe an Avant Garde bonsai or Dali-Esqe Bonsai!
That said, it is an amazing tree, (if it’s not a photoshop mock up, that is) makes one wonder if there are bonsai artist out there who break the rules and treat the form in a modernist or avant garde way and have some success; a bit like Mirei Shigemori did to Japanese Gardens?
This is why I do penzai instead of bonsai. No rules to worry about!
Thanks Richard. Yeah, I like much of the more fearless innovative stuff too, including this crazy collected tree (nature did it!), and I’ve been taken with some of Shigemori’s gardens too.
Brian, yeah, rules are made to be broken but a good foundation in tradition never hurts.
This is one of my favorite bonsai, ever.
Generally my complaint with bonsai, including many trees that others consider to be great bonsai, is that they look more like bonsai than trees (case in point are tridents and olives trained in “pine” styles). But there are noteworthy exceptions, this being one of them.
What I love about Hirao’s juniper is that is completely abstract. The bunjin style reminds us that calligraphy itself takes its cue from the lines nature has already defined, and every once in awhile you see something in nature that reminds you of this. Hirao’s juniper is a classic illustration of this point. It is defiant, playful, mischievous, and tense. It is calligraphy. It is art.
Thanks Al,
I appreciate your insights. I’m not sure it makes the grade as one of my favorites ever, but it is a beaut, distinctively wild and uncontrived (and playful, mischievous and tense). No rules apply and no rules need apply.
One thing I like about this tree is that it is one of the most memorable bonsai you’ll ever see. There are countless amazing pine and juniper bonsai that have exceptional trunks, great nebari, perfectly ramified foliage, etc. We’ve all seen them in books, Bonsai Today magazine, and shows. How many would we recognize from across the room two or three years later and know, without a shadow of a doubt, that we’re looking at that same bonsai we saw a few years ago.
Good question.