Marin Bonsai Club

Shohin bonsai was the topic in March when Bill Castellon, an accomplished bonsai artist who used to conduct shohin workshops for our club once upon a time, gave us a highly informative lecture and demonstration on the topic of these smallest of our small trees. Clearly an extremely knowledgeable artist and horticulturalist, Bill was able to discuss a wide variety of bonsai topics in addition to shohin as he introduced us to and proceeded to transform a Chinese quince, which was raffled off at the end of the night. As a bonus, he also discussed and raffled off a black pine.

Bill began the evening with some general guidelines for shohin, then spent 30 minutes discussing some of the key points to be considered when displaying them. He pointed out that while shohin are typically defined as small trees under 20 centimeters (approximately eight inches) in height, with smaller pots than regular bonsai, simple definitions are often inadequate — a common problem in bonsai, it seems. You cannot chop all but the bottom eight inches from a larger bonsai and call it a shohin any more than you can put a shrub in a pot and call it bonsai. In addition to the subtle qualities that define bonsai, there are certain stylistic nuances unique to shohin. And Bill was there to show us a few development techniques adapted specifically to coax our trees into convincing depictions of old trees that can fit in one of our hands.

The classic shohin setup for a Japanese bonsai show — Kokufu being the gold standard of shows — is to have a multi-compartment box-stand containing several trees, along with an accent plant and a companion or supporting tree that are placed off to one side of the box-stand. Applying the triangular ideal to plan the layout, one should place the strongest trees so that they occupy the corners of the triangle. Along with numerous trees he brought with him, Bill used his own stands, props, and photographs from Kokufu show books to illustrate these and several other points relevant to showing shohin trees.

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The Marin Bonsai Club started the new year off with an energetic and informative forest-on-a-slab demo from Randall Lee, the professional aesthetic tree pruner with a strong penchant for bonsai. Randall brought with him a whole bunch of young but distinctive Catlin Elms, a small collection of sample slabs in addition to the one meant for the elms, some mesh, and some buckets of muck, and set about creating a dramatic tabletop scene in just two hours.

Knowing he had a lot to do in a short amount of time, Randall was already prepping the slab meant for the elms before the demo officially began, and essentially never stopped working and talking until he was done. He did a very good job of keeping a conversation going without interrupting the project.

The prep work he was already doing as the demo began was the creation of an alternate wire tie-down method since his attempt to epoxy wires directly to the slab had failed. This is one of the biggest challenges whenever one attempts a bonsai style that uses something other than a regular container to showcase a tree–how to affix the bonsai material to the rock, slab, deadwood, or whatever else you may be using. Rock plantings have the advantage that you can sometimes find creative ways to wedge the wires into crevices, or even thread wire through the more complex rocks. No such luck with a solid slab. Randall did, however, encourage us to attempt to drill into our rocks and slabs, though it can take a while depending on the hardness of the material, and be sure to use a masonry drill bit! Other than for wire tie-downs, another reason to drill into a slab is to create drainage holes, otherwise slab plantings can get a little swampy with nowhere for the water to go.

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Jonas Dupuich joined us in November to help us better understand bonsai pots and the how-and-why of their importance to our trees. Echoing the last hour of our latest presentation from Peter Tea, Jonas started by pointing out that matching a pot to a tree alone is a huge topic, with a lot of variables to consider, and promised additional tidbits of information to round out the talk. For instance, it is important to know that the pots you see trees in at shows are most often different from the day-to-day pots for those trees. This is especially true in Japan, where the best shows occur during the winter, when transferring a dormant tree from one pot to another and then back again is no big deal.

In his signature engaging style, Jonas started asking the audience for their opinions regarding the important points when matching a tree to a pot well before he distributed his very informative summary page for the talk, which had all of the most popular answers on it. The important pot-choosing points named by the audience were glazed versus unglazed, oval versus rectangular, considerations of origins and styles, and keeping up with standards and trends, among others.

Jonas’ handout, which loosely served as an outline for his talk, had the following five major topics, with three to five points under each topic: “Bonsai pot basics,” “Some conventions,” “Match the container to the stage of development,” “Consider pot alternatives,” and “Preparing pots for exhibits.” If you were not there to get a copy of the handout, try asking an active member for a copy. I’m sure somebody can scan it and send it to you.

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