Shipping Bonsai Cross-Country
So the feature tree in this episode of in the workshop is this spectacular itoigawashimpaku now this tree and i have a long history together i actually worked on this bonsai probably my third year as an apprentice at fujikawa koken in osaka japan as soon as i worked on it one of our clients from the united states purchased it and imported it legally to the u.s it stayed in this collection for a number of years then bounced to another collection and now it’s down here at acn and this is probably a good 10 years since i last worked on it but now we have it at my garden here for a short period to kind of get it back in shape clean it up a little bit rewire certain branches and then this tree is actually going to get shipped off to another part of the united states to a new private collection so it’s kind of surreal to work on a piece of material that i worked on in japan so many years ago and to have it at my own garden now but it’s an honor to you know get to work on trees like this that are of such high quality and have such a long provenance so today is a good day here at asean we just had a shipment of ceramics arrive from japan now these are pots that are actually from tokoname which is a very famous area for bonsai pottery in the central part of japan actually not far from nagoya so i picked these pots out several months ago had them shipped here and in the interim i’ve forgotten exactly what we have in these boxes so we’re going to pop these guys open lay them out on the floor here and take a look at the ceramics from tokunami so i’m really excited to see what’s in here and you know the great thing is these guys have just arrived in time for the spring repotting season so we’ve got a lot of trees here that we need pots for and i’m hoping that a lot of these pots are going to fit those trees we’re also going to be putting the remaining pots here up on our website shortly so if you guys are searching for ceramics definitely be checking that out soon so in my opinion what makes tokoname pots so good is the craftsmanship that goes into each container now of course a lot of these pots are mold made but a lot of them are also slab made or hand built so in either case though the quality of the pots is superb the thicknesses of the walls the lines all of the details everything is beautiful on top of that you’ve got gorgeous glazes as well and then in my opinion what makes them the best in the world is that they’re actually designed to work with bonsai so they’re not overly loud although some of the shohen pots can be quite loud in terms of their glazing but the size shape you know textures all of that kind of stuff combined makes them perfect for pairing with bonsai so you know this is my favorite region obviously anywhere in the world from which to purchase pots aside of course from the antique chinese pots you know there’s nothing better than antique chinese containers in my opinion but these pots right here in terms of modern production are the best in the world in my opinion all right so in addition to the tokoname pots i picked up a lot of additional antique chinese pots from another friend in japan now in these boxes are some of the rarest chinese containers that you’re going to find anywhere in the world and we now have them here at acn so i am absolutely stoked to pop these boxes open see if these guys made it hopefully and then we’re going to put them on our shelves here at the garden and at some point use them with some of our best trees here for exhibitions in the future so let’s dive into these boxes and see exactly what has arrived oh i think i know which one this is okay no we’re okay all right let’s see what we got let’s take it over here i don’t think it’s broken i think we’re okay knock on wood look at that holy cow you guys have any idea what this is this is a non-bomb pot have you ever seen a non-bond pot like this i think most people when they think of non-bond they think of the round containers that were used as you know troughs for animals or lids on other ceramic containers but this too is a true non-bomb pot i have wanted this pot since i was an apprentice in japan and we now have it here at asean so this pot was originally part of the collection of mr yanai who was one of our good customers at fuji costumes nursery and he actually had two of these pots in his collection he sold me one of those pots so i am super super stoked to have this here at the garden i think this one is especially sweet super smooth yeah it’s got great feet that’s what i always look for i just know you put it yeah i just love it i guess look at the bottom of it beautiful all right unless you think that i only buy pots from asia i do not we actually have some fantastic pots here that were produced by an american maker sunny boggs i’ve been friends with sunny since i was a kid actually i met him in north carolina at the north carolina expo i think when i was probably 14 or 15 years old so sunny actually made these pots for us here at asan and these two are going to be up on our website here shortly but what i like about sunny’s pots is that he kind of takes the model from tokonami in terms of the textures the thickness of the walls all the craftsmanship and then he throws his own unique glazes on them and additional shapes and whatnot so i really like these pots and i think they’re going to work beautifully with a number of bonsai so there we go it’s always a sad day to see such an awesome tree leave the garden here at asean but i do know that it’s going to a very good home on the other side of the country and it’s going to be well taken care of so i’ve got a lot of confidence for its future so over the last couple of days cameron and i have been building this wooden crate here we’ve got a company coming at the end of the day today to pick it up and take it to its final destination so i’m thinking it’s probably going to be about four or five days in transit but with it being winter right now it should be totally fine in the crate and i’m looking forward to seeing what the owner thinks of it when he actually gets it to his private collection you
