Omiya Bonsai Art Museum, this time with new photos

OUME

Japanese apricot (often referred to as Ume) at the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum in Saitama, Japan. You can see the whole tree below

We’re going to continue with the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum today, but this time with newly posted photos from their facebook timeline. Ones we’ve never shown before

20% OFF EVERYTHING

SITE WIDE SALE
ENDS TONIGHT

PLUS AN EXTRA 10% TO 20% OFF ROSHI TOOLS
AN EXTRA 10% OFF BONSAI POTS

THESE SPECIALS END WEDNESDAY, JAN 23RD AT 11:59PM EST

–

OSTSRJAS

Star jasmine fully cascading with all the foliage below the pot

 

OMOON

Another Japanese apricot (Ume). This time with a moon pot

 

OCAM2

Camellia japonica 'Unryu.' Is the pot made of bamboo or is it ceramic made to look like bamboo?

 

OCAMQ

This elegantly flowing tree is a Camellia wabisuke 'Hatsukari'

 

OJMAP

Like so many Japanese maples in Japan, this one has an impressive nebari

 

OUMESCROLL

Shadow dancing. The Japanese apricot from above
Deeply Discounted Bonsai & Japanese Garden Products at Stone Lantern

Masters of Refining Bonsai

omc

We don't usually feature photos with so much background noise, but this Trident maple is phenomenal and it's the only shot we've got

Just home from vacation. The return was supposed to be a two day trek, but snow added a day.  Anyway, it’s late and I could skip today’s post, but instead we’ll just keep digging up Omiya Bonsai Museum photos from our archives (this one is from January, 2015). It’s easy enough and it will provide another opportunity for a heads up about the end of our Site Wide Sale tomorrow night 

All the bonsai shown here resides at the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum in Saitama, Japan. They all deciduous trees in winter with their bare bones exposed. A good time to study line and ramification
Continued below…

20% OFF EVERYTHING

SITE WIDE SALE
ENDS TOMORROW NIGHT

PLUS AN EXTRA 10% TO 20% OFF ROSHI TOOLS
AN EXTRA 10% OFF BONSAI POTS

THESE SPECIALS END WEDNESDAY, JAN 23RD AT 11:59PM EST

 

om7

This Trident maple shows good ramification and phenomenal trunk that seems to have swallowed a stone

Continued from above…
The thing that most separates Japanese bonsai from much of the bonsai in the rest of the world is refinement. With deciduous trees this is most obvious when you look at ramification (branch structure and particularly fine branching). There are certainly other features that express refinement, for example taper and nebari, but nothing expresses it more than the development of fine branching
Continued below…

 

om3 A broom style Japanese Zelkova that shows a powerful old trunk and well-balanced branching with excellent ramification.

Continued from above…
There are of course some bonsai in the West (and elsewhere) that express great refinement, but in general the Japanese are still the masters of the art of refinement. This has to do with technical expertise and simply time in training

om5

This Stewartia, with its light airy branching, is designed to show off its long smooth trunk and colorful exfoliating bark

 

om2In this case it's more about the fruit than ramification. If the birds don't get them, Crabapples can hold their fruit well into the winter

 

om1

As long as we're talking about ramification... Not to take anything away from this old Trident maple's spectacular trunk.

 

om4 The delicate branching provides a sharp contrast to the short powerful trunk and its striking nebari. Though Tridents often feature the most developed nebari, this Japanese maple is no slouch in that regard

All the photos in this post were borrowed from the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum’s facebook timeline.

 

20% OFF EVERYTHING

SITE WIDE SALE
ENDS TOMORROW NIGHT
All-Products-1

YOU CAN ENJOY EXTRA DISCOUNTS
IN ADDITION TO OUR SITE WIDE SALE

EXTRA 10% OFF 1-2 ROSHI TOOLS
20% OFF 3 OR MORE ROSHI TOOLS
PLUS AN EXTRA 10% OFF BONSAI POTS
–INCLUDING OUR TIE POTS–

THESE SPECIALS END WEDNESDAY, JAN 23RD AT 11:59PM EST

Deeply Discounted Bonsai & Japanese Garden Products at Stone Lantern

Another Mid Winter Tease

ezo

The new growth on Spruce is often a brilliant yellow. Almost like yellow flowers. In this case the spruce is an Ezo (Picea jezoensis). This one resides at the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum as do the other trees in this post.

Continuing with our long trek  home from vacation, I found just enough time to sneak another one in from the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum. Like yesterday it’s also from our archives (June, 2015).

SITE WIDE SALE ENDS SOON
20% OFF EVERYTHING

PLUS AN EXTRA 10% TO 20% OFF ROSHI TOOLS
AN EXTRA 10% OFF BONSAI POTS

 

sat2

For a lot of people, Satsuki azaleas are all about the flowers, so it doesn't matter so much that you can't really see the trunk in this photo. You can however see just how massive it is and that this would be a strong bonsai even without the flowers.

 

pinecrop

Another massive trunk on an impressive bonsai. It's a Japanese black pine with bright new buds acting as spring accents.

 

Speaking of Pines…
b1pine-2

our masters series Pine Book

sat3

Another Satsuki in full flower. So much so that it's okay that the trunk is obscured.

 

maple

A triple-trunked Trident maple full of fresh yellow-green spring leaves.

 

sat

Raised-root trunks are not uncommon with Satsuki.

20% off Site Wide Sale

All-Products-1

YOU CAN ENJOY EXTRA DISCOUNTS
IN ADDITION TO OUR SITE WIDE SALE

EXTRA 10% OFF 1-2 ROSHI TOOLS
20% OFF 3 OR MORE ROSHI TOOLS
PLUS AN EXTRA 10% OFF BONSAI POTS
–INCLUDING OUR TIE POTS–


FREE Shipping on Continental U.S. orders 75.00+
(only if you chose free shipping when you check out)
STONELANTERN.COM

Deeply Discounted Bonsai & Japanese Garden Products at Stone Lantern

A Mid Winter Spring Color Tease

sat

Today we begin the long two day journey from sea and sun back to waist high snow and sub zero temps. So no time to put together anything new for you, though this one is old enough (June, 2015) where it will be new to most of you anyway. They are all Azaleas  (Satsuki, I think) from the Omiya Bonsai Museum. One of our favorites. Enjoy.

SITE WIDE SALE ENDS SOON
20% OFF EVERYTHING

PLUS AN EXTRA 10% TO 20% OFF ROSHI TOOLS
AN EXTRA 10% OFF BONSAI POTS

 

sat2

 

sat3

 

sat4

 

sat5

Deeply Discounted Bonsai & Japanese Garden Products at Stone Lantern

Exceptional Before & After Bonsai

taxusafter

This has to be one of the most compelling bonsai I've seen in a while. It has that wild, not overly refined look and though the deadwood is prominent, it's not dominated by deadwood like so many trees. But perhaps the best of all are are the brilliant living veins and the way they stand out against the deadwood

Island hopping today, so to save precious time, we're going to rerun a post on one of my favorite trees.

This before and after is more about refinement than styling rough stock. Less daunting perhaps, but only someone skilled in the art of bonsai can do what you see here. In this case, that someone is Gabriel Romero Aguade (Bonsai Sant-boi) (this isn’t the first time we’ve featured him on Bark).

Continued below…

MID WINTER SITE WIDE SALE
20% OFF EVERYTHING

PLUS AN EXTRA 10% TO 20% OFF ROSHI TOOLS
AN EXTRA 10% OFF BONSAI POTS

 

beforeBefore. Already a very impressive bonsai. Just needs an expert hand to bring out its best

Though no name is mentioned, the tree looks like a Yew. You can tell by the foliage and the reddish bark. Yew bonsai are popping up everywhere. Especially in Europe with the English (aka European) yew (Taxus baccata), where there seems to be an abundance of good stock.

 

Deeply Discounted Bonsai & Japanese Garden Products at Stone Lantern

Defoliating Grandfather Bonsai

defoliationHere’s Juan Adrade’s English caption for this magnificent old Trident maple. “Partial defolation on one of the grandfather trees. Close to 100 yrs old." Here's his Spanish: "Defoliación de las ramas exteriores en uno de los tridentes del abuelo de mi maestro. Este arbol posiblemente se acerca a los 100 años." You might notice the part about exterior branches in the Spanish. This would indicate that Juan is redirecting energy away from the outer tips and down closer to the center of the tree. This photo is from Juan’s facebook feed.

Defoliation is an important technique for redirecting energy, maintaining balance and creating fine branching. Especially on deciduous bonsai. The photo above is from a post we did in 2014 titled Defoliating Grandfather. The illustrations and text below are from a July 2009 post titled Energy Balancing #6: Defoliation Tips. Most of this post was shown in 2015. I think defoliation warrants the repetition.

MID WINTER SITE WIDE SALE
20% OFF EVERYTHING

PLUS AN EXTRA 10% TO 20% OFF ROSHI TOOLS
AN EXTRA 10% OFF BONSAI POTS

–

bt3p20defol1a

Cut…
Use sharp scissors to defoliate. Cut in the center of the petiole (leaf stem). If you cut too close to the base of the leaf stem, you may damage the buds that form there.

…don’t pull
Don’t use you fingers to pinch or pull leaves off. This is a recipe for damage (the unreadable text with the illustration above says: Don’t pull, it could damage the buds). More on defoliation below….

BTbanner3

Bonsai Today back issues provide a wealth of information on a wide range of Bonsai topics, including articles on defoliation. All available back issues are now 5.00 each, plus an additional 20% off for our Site Wide Sale.

bt3p20defol1bDefoliate, then prune
This illustrations go from right to left, Japanese style. Upper right is before. Lower right is next. It shows after defoliation, but before pruning. The message here is; if you are going to prune and defoliate, then defoliate before you prune so you can better see exactly where to prune (within reason; if you know you are going to remove a whole branch, no point in defoliating it). Bottom center is after pruning (the after pruning tag in the illustration is a little out of place).

Defoliation results in better ramification
The two on the left show what the branch might look like later if you hadn’t defoliated (top) and with defoliation (bottom).

All of the illustrations in this post are by Kyosuke Gun. They originally appeared in Bonsai Today issue #3 (Japanese images courtesy of Bonsai Focus).

Deeply Discounted Bonsai & Japanese Garden Products at Stone Lantern

Three Before & After Bonsai – Two Junipers & a Pine

3

Before and after bonsai styling by Juan Andrade. The trees are from top to bottom: Shimpaku juniper, Japanese black pine and a Needle juniper trunk with Shimpaku juniper foliage grafted on.

Juan Andrade was a long term apprentice at Bonsai Aichien nursery in Japan. We’ve been following Juan’s progress for a long time (here’s a Bark post from 2012 that features a tree of his). Juan posts regularly on facebook, which is where we found these photos.

MID WINTER SITE WIDE SALE
20% OFF EVERYTHING

PLUS AN EXTRA 10% TO 20% OFF ROSHI TOOLS
and AN EXTRA 10% OFF BONSAI POTS

 

afterpine

This pine has a bunjin feel, but I think it's a little too lush to qualify as bunjin. In case you are wonder what Bunjin is, there's a pretty good discussion here.

aftershim

It's not in a pot yet, but if you look at the before photo above, you can see that this  Shimpaku has come a long ways in the right direction.

 

afterbunjin

You might call this one a bunjin, though I'm not sure I've ever seen one so dominated by deadwood.

20% off Site Wide Sale

All-Products-1

PLUS YOU CAN ENJOY EXTRA DISCOUNTS
IN ADDITION TO OUR SITE WIDE SALE

EXTRA 10% OFF 1-2 ROSHI TOOLS
20% OFF 3 OR MORE ROSHI TOOLS
PLUS AN EXTRA 10% OFF BONSAI POTS
–INCLUDING OUR TIE POTS–


FREE Shipping on Continental U.S. orders 75.00+
(only if you chose free shipping when you check out)
STONELANTERN.COM

 

Deeply Discounted Bonsai & Japanese Garden Products at Stone Lantern

Two Before & After Bonsai – Juniper & Pine

 

ba1 copy

We found these two photos at Bonsai Shikoku. All the text is Japanese and there are no intermediate photos, so what you see is what you get. At a glance you can see that the foliage has been thinned in order to expose most of the trunk and some of the branching. This allows for an unobstructed view of the deadwood and the lower sections of the living veins. Another obvious change is the result of meticulous cleaning and brightening of the deadwood and living veins.

Continuing with our recent Before and After theme, we’ve got couple good ones for you. Both are from Bonsai Shikoku. The Shimpaku juniper above came with untranslated Japanese text, so you’re stuck with my comments, though we do have a link to an excellent video on treating deadwood and living veins.

The Japanese black pine below has English text, so we’ll dispense with my comments and go straight to the source. Enjoy!

MID WINTER SITE WIDE SALE
20% OFF EVERYTHING

PLUS AN EXTRA 10% TO 20% OFF ROSHI TOOLS
and AN EXTRA 10% OFF BONSAI POTS
–

ba2

These photos are also from Bonsai Shikoku, but this time there's English text, as follows... "Artists adapt trees once in 4 to 5 years. The main purpose of it is to maintain a good size and to receive the sunlight by cutting the branches.

"This time he adapted a Misho (grown from seed) Kuromatsu (Japanese black pine) which is about 40 years old. A long time has passed since the last adaptation. The tree's branches and needles were too long and the balance with trunk was bad. He felt the branch on the left is too big against the trunk on the right.

"He cut the long branch and it allowed the trunk to be seen. He also showed us the technique to make Jin with the cut branch by knuckle cutters and chisels...." There's more here.

20% off Site Wide Sale

All-Products-1

PLUS YOU CAN ENJOY EXTRA DISCOUNTS
IN ADDITION TO OUR SITE WIDE SALE

EXTRA 10% OFF 1-2 ROSHI TOOLS
20% OFF 3 OR MORE ROSHI TOOLS
PLUS AN EXTRA 10% OFF BONSAI POTS
–inCLUDING OUR TIE POTS–


FREE Shipping on Continental U.S. orders 75.00+
(only if you chose free shipping when you check out)
STONELANTERN.COM

–

Deeply Discounted Bonsai & Japanese Garden Products at Stone Lantern

A Steady Stream of High Quality Shohin Bonsai

har5There are few things more delicate than fresh spring Maple leaves (Trident maple in this case). This and the other bonsai in this post are by Haruyosi

Still on vacation so we’ll keep borrowing from our past. This time it’s Haruyoshi’s little trees. Haruyosi has been making and photographing a steady stream of high quality shohin bonsai  (including the pots) for a long time

MID WINTER SITE WIDE SALE
20% OFF EVERYTHING

PLUS AN EXTRA 10% TO 20% OFF ROSHI TOOLS
and AN EXTRA 10% OFF BONSAI POTS
–

har6Red on red. In a previous Haruyosi post (Very Red and Very Rare), we mentioned that red glazes are expensive and not that easy to do. The tree is an Elaeagnus pungens (Siverthorn in English, Kangumi in Japanese).

 

harMore delicate spring beauty. This time the pot is yellow. It turns out that, like red pots, yellow pots aren't all that common. The tree is Malus halliana (Hall's crapapple).

 

har3This one is a Japanese quince (Chaenomeles speciosa)

 

har4Red and yellow together. In addition to being a highly accomplished bonsai artist, Haruyosi is a highly accompished ceramic artist

20% off Site Wide Sale

All-Products-1

PLUS YOU CAN ENJOY EXTRA DISCOUNTS
in addition to our site wide sale

extra 10% OFF 1-2 ROSHI TOOLS
20% OFF 3 OR MORe roshi tools
plus an extra 10% off bonsai pots
including our tie pots


FREE Shipping on Continental U.S. orders 75.00+
(only if you chose free shipping when you check out)
STONELANTERN.COM

–

 

 

Deeply Discounted Bonsai & Japanese Garden Products at Stone Lantern

Four Shohin Bonsai & a Strange Translation

all4

Miyazato Rintaro posted these four small trees last month. Here's a strange machine translation for you... "For Sale. I'm going to give it to the net in the afternoon. This time, from mini bonsai to small pieces, We have a tree with sights. Please contact us"

Shohin means a small thing in Japanese and all four of these trees qualify. They were posted by Miyazato Rintaro . The translations are machine generated, and though they generally tend to be better than they were a couple years ago, they still have a ways to go

MID WINTER SITE WIDE SALE
20% OFF EVERYTHING

PLUS AN EXTRA 10% TO 20% OFF ROSHI TOOLS
–

1

This translation for this one says... "14.5 cm itoigawa true kashiwa" (5.7") I just looked up kashiwa a couple places and both said 'oak.' Go figure. By the way, Itoigawa is a variety of Sargent's juniper. Here's a post from a couple years ago about the difference between itoigawa, shimpaku & kishu junipers

 

2

Only the size is different on this one... "10.3 cm itoigawa true kashiwa." (4")

 

3

This one says... "13 cm ishizuchi pine" (5.12"). Ishizuchi is a mountain in Japan. Though no variety is given, if I had to guess I'd say Japanese black pine (I'm wrong more often than I'd like to admit, so don't take it to the bank)

5

"17 cm awaji kuromatsu" (6.7"). Kuromatsu is Black pine (Japanese black pine in this case) and awaji is a city in Japan

20% off Site Wide Sale

PLUS YOU CAN ENJOY EXTRA DISCOUNTS
ON OUR ROSHI BONSAI TOOLS

10% OFF 1-2 ROSHI TOOLS
20% OFF 3 OR MORE

Roshi-Banner4ROSHI BONSAI TOOLS
quality materials and craftsmanship
make for precision, durability and beauty
at exceptionally reasonable prices
now even more reasonable
FREE Shipping on Continental U.S. orders 75.00+
(only if you chose free shipping when you check out)
STONELANTERN.COM

–

 

Deeply Discounted Bonsai & Japanese Garden Products at Stone Lantern