Private Collector Celebrates!

Renjishi Doll

Last week we went over to Daijuen and helped them setup a special show for one of their customers. I’ve personally never met this customer so I don’t know his name or his face but what I do know is that he decided to put on a special bonsai show this year to celebrate his 88th birthday! (How cool is that?) The three-day show was small with only about 14 trees but what really got my attention was how the show was setup. The collector is also a painter and he wanted to display his paintings during the show as well so we spent a good amount of time hanging paintings on the wall. In this post, I’m going to share with you all the trees that were shown and many of the other things to see.

The Setup

The setup of the show was very basic just like any other small local show. The room the show was held in was on the third floor which made it fun for us apprentices to carry many things up there. Though I was happy that there was a (very) small elevator we could use to move the trees up and down. All in all, the setup only took a couple of hours.

Here are some scrolls for decoration. The scroll with the fish is my favorite.

Here’s a close up of the Tai (Red Sea Bream) fish. This fish is highly prized in Japan and is usually only served during special occasions such as New Years.

These blue covered tables are for visitors to sit down with a cup of tea to relax and enjoy the show.

The show is starting to come together.

Here is our visiting apprentice Jacques from France helping with dispersing old bamboo leaves in the small garden display. I would love to see this kind of display in the US.

The Trees of the Show

The collector loves Black Pine and most his trees on display were Black Pines. Daijuen and Aichien provided a couple of flowering trees to add color to the show. From the looks of many of the Black Pines, the collector may have grown them himself. I took these photos during the set up so there might be some setup items in the shot.

Japanese Black Pine

Needle Juniper. When Chris Baker from Maryland was apprenticing at Diajuen, he was charged with cleaning and enhancing the deadwood features on this tree.

Japanese Black Pine

Japanese Black Pine.

Japanese Cherry (Sakura) that’s about to bloom.

Large multi-trunk Japanese Maple

I believe this may be the collector’s best Black Pine.

Nice red flower Japanese plum (Ume)

A close up of the Ume flowers.

Japanese Black Pine

Japanese Quince known as Boke in Japan. This type of quince from the Nagoya area flowers more often and doesn’t have thorns. I’ll take that!

Close up of the Boke flowers.

Cascading Camellia that’s flowering.

Here’s the close up of the pretty flowers. I would like to see more camellias developed as Bonsai in the rest of the world.

What? Another Japanese Black Pine?

Here’s a Japanese Quince called Chojubai. The flowers are red and small.

A close up of the Chojubai flowers.

A Few of the Accents

Bronze dancer

Renjishi Doll

Wood carving

Cool little root over rock Forsythia

Pool Stone

A mix of all sorts!

Some of the Paintings

The paintings were hung all over the walls and they undulated up and down over and around the bonsai. Everything was mixed together so there was no individual display but more of a whole room display.

This painting of deadwood on a tree reminds me of a tree I’ve seen before. I think it’s the shari and jin of a famous Needle Juniper Bonsai.

Painting of an Ice Skater. Ice skating is very popular in Japan.

There was a good number of these sorts of watercolor paintings. There would be some words with a flower/vegetable/fruit in the painting. Perhaps they are short poems?

A painting of two small boats in the water.

I don’t believe the collector created this piece and may have been something he wanted to show that was in his collection.

Feel of the Show

A feel of what the show looked like.

One of the main reasons why I wanted to share these pictures with you all is to give us some ideas of how we can display our bonsai in the future. Most of the time, we tend to follow guidelines to what we believe is how to display bonsai. Regardless if we like or dislike how the trees were displayed in this format, the more important part to understand is that there are many ways for us to display our bonsai and that we should explore different and new ways to do it. Why not display bonsai with suiseki? Why not display bonsai with paintings? Why not display bonsai with sculptures? Why not display bonsai with _______???

By no means am I discrediting the traditional ways of displaying bonsai because they are important and there’s a long history of it being very effective. But instead of saying that the traditional ways are the only ways, let’s say that it’s one of the ways and we all should be experimenting with new ways to display our trees.

Entertainment

On one side of the room we setup a small stage so that these two women could setup their string instruments to play during the show. How classy is that? These instruments made of kiri wood are called Koto and is the national instrument of Japan.

Once everything was setup, the women laid a beautifully patterned fabric on top of the instruments. I wish I was there to during the show to hear what they sounded like.

Decorations

Since this show was a celebration, there were also nice flower arrangements within the room.

Nice group of orchids

Close up of one of the orchids. They always amaze me!

Not sure of all the flower names here but very pretty.

So there you have it. Another bonsai show setup and another man turns 88 years old. I hope you all enjoyed the photos. Sorry I’ve been sparse on the post lately but with the show season, wiring work and new apprentices to manage, I haven’t had much time to write post (or answer many of my emails). The good news is that the show season has just ended and it will be repotting season soon. The post should be coming a bit more regularly from here on.

Thanks for attending the show!

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If you’re looking for more to read, check out this new post at YenlingBonsai.com on how a rainwater collection and Reverse Osmosis system was setup. Please subscribe if you like the blog. Here’s a preview:

…I’ve posted the results below with a little write up about what I did in hopes that it may give you some ideas if you have poor water quality like me. I’m now using a combo of collected rain water and reverse osmosis water for my trees.

Here’s what my new overall set up looks like:

YenlingBonsai.com

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