This is the 200th Post for the blog! I was just going to phone it in, and do a retrospective. Instead, I figured, why not a special post, why not a treat on a special day, with an additional treat of special and fascinating subject matter.
In this week’s regular Monday article, we looked at traditional motifs that frequently appear on bonsai containers and come from hand scrolls, folding screens and statues, myths, and legends. In this post we will look at traditional motifs that are derived from the famous ukiyo-e(woodblock prints) of Ando Hiroshige and Katsushita Hokusai.

The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō 

The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō are a series of woodblock prints by Utagawa Hiroshige(born Ando Hiroshige) made in 1833-1834. He created the prints after his first journey upon the Tōkaidō road, where he was part of an official party escorting a gift of horses for the Imperial court.
The Tōkaidō road was a major trade and travel artery through Japan, connecting Edo to the capital at the time, Kyoto. The stations along the Tōkaidō road were way stations for travelers and merchants to restock supplies, eat, and rest. While Hiroshige created more than 30 versions of the prints, the Hōeidō version is the original and most famous, and also the source material most often used for depictions on bonsai containers.

The 36 Views of Mount Fuji

Mount Fuji is considered a symbol of Japanese National identity, and is sacred in Japanese religious tradition. Perhaps no other visual representations of “Fuji San”(Mr. or Sir Fuji, an often heard referral showing respect and deference) is more emblematic than Katsushita Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mount Fuji. The multicolor woodblock prints depict Mount Fuji from various views and locations, with surrounding towns and environments, and in differing weather. These iconic woodblock prints(ukiyo-e) were created at the height of Hokusai’s career, from 1830 to 1833. The vast majority of bonsai container depictions from the 36 Views are of Fine Wind, Clear Morning, Thunderstorm Beneath the Summit, and The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, although many other scenes do appear regularly.

The Great Wave Off Kanagawa

While The Great Wave Off Kanagawa is actually a part of Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mount Fuji series, it deserves its own section due to its fame and the frequency with which it appears on bonsai containers. The print dates to the late Edo period, 1829-1833, and depicts 3 boats battling a giant rogue wave in the Sagami bay, with Fuji San in the background.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my 200th post, and reading about the traditional woodblock prints that inspire modern bonsai container art. In the next installment of the series, we’ll look at shapes and details to pots that have named origins, be they individual artists, kilns, or eras.

Thanks for reading!

The title for this post is pretty self explanatory. Today I’ll answer the question of where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to since I stopped publishing articles and blogs here nearly 5 years ago. I felt my passion slipping away then, so I decided, for a while, to focus instead on lecturing in person, and to go to shows, not just as a vendor, but as an enthusiast. My goal was to rekindle my love of bonsai and bonsai pottery and rediscover the passion that had become jaded and sharp from the business of it all. And it was a decided success.
Let’s take a look at the highlight reel of some of the places I’ve been, some friends I’ve met along the way, and some of what I’ve seen since I’ve been away from the site! Don’t worry, once you pass through the gauntlet of pictures of my ugly mug there ware more pots and trees to look forward to at the end!

Charity Work

With my partner Dave Paris, along with the Beer, Wine, and Cheese and Bonsai Auctions Facebook groups, over the last 5 years charity work for members of the community is easily the thing I’m most proud of. We’ve raised well over $60,000 with combinations of Gofundme pages and Facebook auctions of items donated by generous members of the community. We’ve championed many causes, ranging from a new car for Nestor Torres, to the fairly recent Owen Reich home fire, to helping with Roy Minarai’s daughter’s medical bills, among many others. Watching the bonsai community come together and give to others in the art in need has been wonderful to behold and always reminds me that the people are the thing I love most about bonsai.

Big Exhibition Lectures

Since the last article I published before this year, in March 2016, I’ve spoken at dozens of clubs and societies, along with several larger National, Regional, and State Level Exhibitions. In that nearly 5 year span, I’ve lectured at 2 US National Bonsai Exhibitions, 2 US National Shohin Bonsai Exhibitions, the UK National Exhibition, the Lone Star Bonsai Federation state exhibition, the Mid America Bonsai Alliance Regional Exhibition, the American Bonsai Society Exhibition in St. Louis, and was one of the headliners at the 2019 Golden State Bonsai Federation California state exhibition. It’s been an absolute blast to meet enthusiasts from all over the US and Europe at these Exhibitions and an honor to speak at them.

Club Lectures and Nursery Events

I’ve been a guest lecturer at several dozen clubs, nurseries, societies, and associations over the last 5 years in the US and the UK. It’s been a real pleasure, not only to teach in so many different places, but to meet people in the community from such diverse regions and see the differences in how they practice bonsai and the differences in their taste in pottery.

Pots, Bonsai, and Other Stuff

A few highlights and random photos of bonsai pottery I’ve seen, sold, bought, or been given in my travels in the last 5 years, along with a few photos of the many bonsai I’ve seen and other pics. Enjoy!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek at what I’ve been up to in the last several years since the articles stopped. Next Monday’s scheduled post we’ll be back to the old standby Artist profile, with future articles coming up on Patina, Cost and Value, and Yuuga, plus many artist profiles!

Thanks for reading!

Like so many other great bonsai potters Fukuda Tadahiro was originally just a serious bonsai enthusiast who began by making containers for his own trees and enjoyment. Eventually he assumed the potter name Koto Chukan. He has been practicing Shohin bonsai for more than 40 years now, and has exhibited displays in the Gafu Ten Shohin Exhibition more than 30 times.
Currently, he lives and works in Kyoto. He only uses Shigaraki clay, owing to his training, where he learned under the guidance of Mr. Miho, a Shigaraki traditional craftsman potter.
As a bonsai container artist, Chukan is known for using unique twists on classical patterns so that the pots best suit bonsai. His awards in pottery exhibitions, including the exclusive Contemporary Artists Kobachi Exhibition held each year at Gafu Ten, are numerous. His technical skill with clay is as impressive as his unique glazing ability. Koto Chukan containers are handmade, rare, and one of a kind, as you will see from the following gallery, and as such can command pretty impressive prices for a living artist.
There used to be an excellent biography and awesome artist mark sheet(Chukan had a lot of marks!) for Koto Chukan on the Kojoen(a Kyoto Shohin Bonsai garden)website, but it was deleted when they redid their site. If you got to read it while it was still up you know a lot more about this artist than this article will give you.
Special thanks to Alex “Mai Bonsai” Rudd of the EBPC for use of some of his photos.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this look at the one of a kind Shohin bonsai pottery of Koto Chukan. Stay tuned for more artist profiles and galleries of artists we’ve covered in the past in future posts!

Thanks for reading!

His real name is 濱田 重章(Shigeru Hamada) and his kiln/potter’s name is “Hin Zyubeiei” though his pots are commonly referred to simply as Zyubei. He was born in 1946 in Osaka and began creating shohin bonsai in 1972. By 1973, he was teaching bonsai classes in shohin at Shunshoen. In 1981, he began making bonsai pots, and purchased an electric kiln in 1989. After retirement in 2009, he began making bonsai pots professionally.
There are three other articles and galleries on the site dedicated to this artist, if you’d like to see and read more check out the table of contents.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this gallery of the work of Shigeru Zyubei. Check the table contents for more articles and galleries on this blog favorite artist.

Thanks for reading!

I once heard a well known American bonsai potter state that patina on bonsai pottery is just dirt, cracks, and chips. It isn’t. For starters, cracks and chips are not patina, they’re defects. Second, patina is more than just dirt. Dirt can be easily cleaned, relatively speaking, from a container, while patina takes serious work to remove.
So what is patina, then? From a literal standpoint, patina on bonsai pottery is a very thin film of oxidized very small particles of substrate, dust, oils, and solid fertilizer that builds in a very particular way over a very long time with use. In a less literal sense, patina is visible age.
One thing that is often overlooked in the West is the Japanese idea that ‘the dignity of the pot should suit the dignity of the tree.’ In this sense, dignity encompasses visual age, value, and aesthetics. In a great composition, the tree should appear as if it could have been in that container it’s whole life.
Patina is very important to us as Bonsai artists as our most common goal is to create compositions that invoke the image or evoke the feeling of majestic aged trees in nature, in miniature. A container with ‘visible age’, patina, is necessary to achieve this goal.
In this sense, patina can be thought of as “the Yamadori of Bonsai containers.” Why do we appreciate Yamadori? It certainly isn’t the ease of styling or collecting. It’s the visual, and often visceral, appearance of great age that trees collected from the mountains have, which gets us halfway there to our goal of creating an image that calls to mind majestic aged trees in nature. Real age will always be more visually convincing and compelling than our attempts to imitate it. The pots we choose to present our trees are no different. A container that is actually old, and appears so, gets us that much closer to the goal of our compositions.
Visually, patina is a darkening of the surface of the container that begins at the rim and the base and moves towards the center. Raised areas will develop patina faster than recessed areas, as will rougher surfaces. The rougher the surface the faster patina will build. In general, porcelain pots have the smoothest surfaces, followed by glazed pots, then unglazed pots. Practically, this means that a very groggy, rough unglazed container will get a decent, visible patina with a decade or so of use, a burnished unglazed pot may take two or more decades, a glazed container will take three decades, and a painted porcelain pot could take four decades or more.
There is such a thing as too much patina. Eventually, a container reaches a point where it is no longer recognizable. For example, cream and green glazed pots become totally coffee colored or brown, and cannot be used as cream and green glazed pots. At that point, they are often very carefully cleaned by professionals, exposing the center of the container and returning the container to its original aesthetic function. Many of the containers in this post have been at least partially cleaned at some point.

Let’s look at some examples of patina. Thanks as always go to Matthew Ouwinga for use of some photos, as well as Tim Priest.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this first article and gallery on patina. In future posts we’ll look at how to improve patina on our own pots and various examples of faux patina.

Thanks for Reading!

Born January 28, 1929, Matuei Kimiko first began making containers in 1973. She was self taught in the beginning of her career, and her early work is primarily pinch pots and sharply contrasts with the higher refinement of later work. This step up into more refined pieces came under the tutelage of a later teacher: the esteemed Hayashi Toujaku.
Her work is said to have a distinctly feminine feel to it, and is pretty stylistically varied. Mostly she is known for her pattern relief and carved pots, although she made many glazed and unglazed pieces as well. Her pieces are extraordinarily rare, as pottery dealer and collector Matt Ouwinga remarked to me recently that they were “as rare as hen’s teeth.” Despite the rarity of her works, she is one of the most influential female bonsai potters of the 20th century.
I’m going to keep this one brief and just post a gallery, as I haven’t been able to put together a more detailed post over the last couple of weeks due to illness(I couldn’t post at all last week). Anyway, Enjoy!

Hope you’ve enjoyed this gallery of bonsai pots by Matuei Kimiko. Thanks for reading!