Kusamura Bonsai Club
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From Ted Matson's Presentation at the May 2001 Meeting |
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Those in attendance were impressed by how much thought and attention to detail went into Ted's tiny landscapes. Saikei is a style of bonsai developed by Toshio Kawamoto in which rocks and young trees are combined to resemble literal landscapes Ted told us. (With regular bonsai, viewers use their imaginations to place displayed trees in a natural setting.) Kawamoto said that saikei could be used as a growing ground for developing young trees as stand alone bonsai. With shohin saikei the pot can be no more than ten inches wide. For his demonstration, Ted chose a very shallow, rectangular tray. It was narrow in width, unobtrusive in color, and had insignificant, low feet. The small stones he used had been collected in the Southern California desert. (Ted noted that an unusual source of good stones are aquarium shops.) All of his stones displayed small elements of interest such as an overhanging part, a hole, layers, a flowing line suggestive of a watercourse. To give more relief to the scene, Ted piled the rock with the overhang onto a flat one using muck. (Muck Recipe) The tip of the overhang was placed to point toward the rock with a hole, giving movement and depth to the composition. The rocks were placed on a shallow bed of soil so that trees' roots could grow under the rocks. Ted said that the rocks should appear as a mass, not as individuals, and should give the impression that only their tips were showing. Ted remarked that, in his imagination this saikei resembled a desert scene, perhaps in the Grand Canyon, where a small watercourse comes out of a spring. For trees, Ted grows cuttings of juniper, hinoki cypress, Catlin elms, and other types with small leaves. All of the trees for saikei must have interesting character: curves, taper, etc. In this instance, he used two San Jose junipers, one slightly larger than the other. He jinned their tops and reduced the number and length of their branches. He wove the roots of the two together to make one unit and placed them so that they pointed in the same direction as the overhanging rock. He reminded us that consistency and harmony are the watchwords for creating successful bonsai. He worked fine, sandy soil (which drains well) in around the roots of the plants with a chop stick. He prepared bits of moss for the planting by buttering their undersides with muck. (The muck was to get the moss off to a good start.) As he delineated the "watercourse" with sifted decomposed granite of several different sizes and placed bits of moss onto the soil surface, Ted remarked that these little details make the scene come alive. He pushed the soil down all around the rim of the pot to form a frame for the composition and to prevent water from washing the soil away. As a final touch, Ted sprinkled a little fine sand around over the moss. Watering will carry the sand off the high points and into the moss. In his second saikei, Ted placed a smooth, dark, interesting rock with pits and holes in it in front and planted Catlin elms behind it, where they gave depth to the composition. |
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Ted Matson on Shohin
Saikei
