Coming up, Another Great Year for Bonsai

Looks like a Japanese winterberry (Ilex serrata). My apologies for the chopped off pot; our scanner is too small to accommodate the whole bonsai. 2016 starts tomorrow, so you’ll need a good calendar. Both the photos shown here are from our 2016 Bonsai Calendar. Our scanner is too small to fit whole pages, but I suspect these photos are enough to provoke your interest. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve noticed the recent evolution of the art of bonsai. It’s a world wide phenomenon and it’s moving very fast. I’ll blame the web among other things; including a surprising youth … Continue reading Coming up, Another Great Year for Bonsai

Brad Pitt, Bonsai Artist?

Brad Bjorn posing with an impressive (Stewartia?) bonsai. From an article in Architectural Digest titled “Meet the Brad Pitt of Bonsai.” We don’t usually feature photos of people. I almost always find people in bonsai photos distracting. Rather than ‘look at me with my beautiful bonsai,’ I prefer ‘look at this beautiful bonsai.’ However, occasionally photos of people with trees work. In this case, because the article is about Bjorn Bjorholm, “the tall, blond, all-American,” a couple photos of Bjorn with bonsai are appropriate and necessary. Otherwise how would you know? The article in question, ‘Meet the Brad Pitt of … Continue reading Brad Pitt, Bonsai Artist?

Coffee, Bonsai & Something for the Season

Trident maple at the 2013 Taikan-ten Exhibition. There’s a lot going on with the tree; three major trunks and a baby one sticking out the back, a large mounding nebari and a whole lot of movement. I particularly like the trunk on the right that emerges from the base of the nebari (the base of the base). I borrowed the photo from Bjorn Bjorholm. The color seems a bit off, but you still get the drift. It’s a busy time when catching up seems even less likely than usual. One solution is to delve back into our archives. This one … Continue reading Coffee, Bonsai & Something for the Season

Random Shots & Gnarly Branches

This powerful Japanese white pine with its lush canopy that’s shaped like something you’d see on a deciduous tree, makes little attempt to appear like a pine in nature. Still, it’s hard to deny how the power of its trunk and the rich beauty of its canopy complement each other. I found it here. It looks like it’s part of a Japanese bonsai nursery, but I couldn’t find any verification. Still on vacation and still working. But just enough to edit (or eliminate) dated information and resize the images on this post from July 2012*. This wild looking Hornbeam … Continue reading Random Shots & Gnarly Branches

Bonsai Meets Pop Music Again

This old triple trunk Japanese white pine resides at the Omiya Bonsai Art Musem in Saitama Japan. Busy weekend, so we’ll dip back into our archives. This one is from January 2014. First a confession. The title of this post ‘Bonsai Meets Pop Music’ has little if anything to do with the bonsai shown here. However, if you scroll down, you’ll see that it wasn’t made up out of thin air, and if you read Japanese, some light may be shed. All the trees shown here are from the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum, which houses one of the best bonsai … Continue reading Bonsai Meets Pop Music Again

Paradise Found

A Japanese white pine after it was wired by John Milton. The before photo is below. The title Paradise Found is a reference to John Milton’s famous poem Paradise Lost (famous at least on college campuses, if nowhere else). Now we have another John Milton who writes that he’s “currently following (his) dreams and studying as an apprentice at Aichi-en in Nagoya, Japan under Junichiro Tanaka-San” (in addition to the John Milton Paradise connection, the Aichi-en apprenticeship connects nicely with our last post as do the Japanese white pine before and after photos). What I really wanted to show you … Continue reading Paradise Found

Before & After – What Would You Do?

Before you look at the after picture below, consider this: you are visiting Aichi-En Bonsai Nursery in Japan for two weeks and you’re tasked with wiring and styling this Japanese white pine. What would you do? The photos shown here are from Jeremiah Lee’s Yenling Bonsai Blog. In Jerimiah’s own words… “Over the past two weeks I did a visiting apprenticeship at Aichi-En Bonsai Nursery in Nagoya, Japan. Nothing but eat, sleep and Bonsai for two weeks.” Jerimiah goes on to say… “With this tree I’m going to show a useful technique I learned for creating a good anchor point … Continue reading Before & After – What Would You Do?

Multiple Trunks Sharing a Single Root Stystem – Clump Style Bonsai Forests

We found this extraordinary clump style deciduous bonsai on Bonsai Nakayoshi. They don’t give a variety. You can imagine that all the smaller trunks started as suckers on the roots of the main tree (you could also imagine that they started from seeds dropped by the main tree; in which case this would not qualify as a clump style bonsai). We’ve been discussing forest bonsai for a while now without mentioning clump style (Japanese: Kabudachi or Kabubuki) . Rather than boring you with my take on clumps, here’s something that I lifted from ofBONSAI Magazine: “Clump style bonsai should have … Continue reading Multiple Trunks Sharing a Single Root Stystem – Clump Style Bonsai Forests

An Astonishingly Eccentric Two Headed Monster

Calligraphy anyone? I think this is the third time we’ve shown this astonishingly eccentric two headed monster, but it’s been about four years, which means many of you haven’t seen it, and I think everyone should have at least one chance. I don’t know its full history, but I do know that it appeared on The Art of Bonsai Project in a post titled The Bonsai of Mario Komsta, as did all the photos shown in this post. Yixing pot. Once again it’s time for Mario Komsta (Super Mario), one of Europe’s and the world’s new wave of younger bonsai … Continue reading An Astonishingly Eccentric Two Headed Monster

Crème de la Bonsai

2012 Kokufu Prize winning Informal upright Shimpaku juniper (Juniperus chinensis var. shimpaku). This and the other images in this post are from Phoenix Bonsai. Just back and trying to dig out (no good vacation goes unpunished), so once again we’ll dip back into our archives. This one is from 2013. It’s titled Kokufu: More of the Very Best Bonsai. Just in case you haven’t heard of Kokufu, it is generally regarded as the Crème de la Crème when it comes to Bonsai Exhibitons. As long as we’re stealing images from Phoenix Bonsai Society we might as well pillage their text: … Continue reading Crème de la Bonsai