Zuisho

Here’s my first zuisho I was given to style.

There was no angle change or front change (the first pic). It was just a case of cleaning it up, jining the dead back branch and wiring the tree up.

One thing I did is I split the back branch into two levels (as it was long) to replace the missing back branch.

Oyakata’s correction’s.

What Oyakata did is spread the branches more. I thought I had spread them fairly well but, he says that if there is space the pads need to be spread out a lot, as it looks natural. Growth would naturally spread towards areas of space and light in nature. In time as the tree grows these areas will fill out.
The main branch is actually made of two branches which I made into one pad but, Oyakata changed it a bit by making it a pad within a pad. He also lifted the first pad as you look at, to hide the structure.

Thanks for reading.

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Car crash juniper

This is a juniper that I was given a while ago to style, after I had removed the aluminium wire it had on it.

The pile of wire which came off.

The tree certainly looked better for it coming off and the reason for the title is that to me at the time, especially with the wire on, it looked like it had been in a car accident. Maybe due to the way it was stuffed into a vehicle on the way to an auction.

Looking closely at the tree it had a few nice features.

Some dodgy carving on the back though, which needed to be fixed.

I then set about cleaning the trunk and wiring the tree.
I slightly changed the front and I looked at raising the angle as middle of the section looked flat/straight to the pot level. The problem I found in doing this would create a loop on the second branch bringing it down. The second branch was in a good position as well, on the out side of a curve and a good natural position for a second branch. So, I opted to keep the current pot level and hide the section with the second branch solving the problem.

Here was the tree after I finished working on it.

I made two pads out of the second branch to create a back branch, bent the apex to create more movement & compress it a little.
I tried to style the tree the way Oyakata generally likes his tree’s. Oyakata likes to style his tree’s with the main branch following the first trunk direction especially if there is a strong trunk movement. This wasn’t a problem with this tree as it naturally was like this. He also generally likes a strong/heavy main branch which I tried to do. Round underside of pads is also another thing we do here, a posed to the flat style. A lot is taste and depending which nursery you go you all manner of slight differences.

This is the tree after Oyakata’s corrections, an application of lime sulphur and steam bending the Jin to give it a little more movement.

Oyakata removed the second branch and changed the pot level. He then explained why. The reason is that this tree has a bunjin/literati feel to it and the second branch was in too good of a position. Bunjin tree’s branch structure should be a little strange/un-uniform to compliment the style. This then solved the problem I had before. The main branch was also reduced to balance/lighten it out. Apart from that there were some minor alterations to compensate for the angle change.

Thanks for reading.

White pine maintenance and an Oyakata re-style.

It has been a while since I posted anything, for which I’m sorry but I have busy as always.

A while ago we were cleaning up the white pines on the nursery. This entailed removing old needles from 2 years ago on weaker/not so dense tree’s. These could be easily pulled gently with your hands, as they were turning yellow and going to fall in a while. The reason for doing this was to take them off before they turn brown, just to keep them looking nice.
On stronger/very dense tree’s we were cutting needles from two years ago and cutting the previous years needles. The reasoning behind this is to let some light in into the inner branches/thin them out. By cutting the previous years needles instead of pulling, it means that any cluster of needles with a bud in it that will potentially grow, will hold, the others will fall off, thus preserving any potential buds.

The two tree’s here, were just case of pulling the old needles from two years ago.

It is a simple process but, just to clarify here’s some examples of what I did.

A shoot untouched.

The same shoot after needle removal.

Some of the shoots had old needles and hadn’t grown. The shoots of these that the needles came off easily, I cut off as they were going to die anyway.

This was the tree after it’s clean up.

This is the second pine, with the same process.

Whilst I was working on it Oyakata took a look at and chopped off about three branches, which saved me some work and he explained how he wanted to change the angle of the tree making it an informal upright instead of cascade. The branches were too long as it was.

I made some jin’s were they were cut off.

The tree after.

A little while later Oyakata re-potted the tree and used the existing wiring to re-style the tree.

The tree was then exhibited at the recent Nagoya castle show and was sold their to collector Kito-San.

Thanks for reading.