Benvenuti nel mio Blog

Donec congue, neque at interdum vulputate, lectus tortor rutrum nisi, quis auctor elit dui quis enim. Phasellus leo lectus, ultrices vel vestibulum sed, ultrices eget sapien. Praesent imperdiet purus nec vestibulum sagittis. Suspendisse id risus sagittis, pharetra nisi vitae, tincidunt nulla. 

Juniper Chinensis var.Itoigawa

The story of this juniper chinensis owned by the company “Franchi Bonsai” begins in 2012. Here is the tree before being worked on for the first time:     The first thing to do is the cleaning of the bark and vegetation and the subsequent application of jin liquid. The result is the highlighting of the living vein that wraps on the long thin trunk. The position is completely horizontal and in my opinion does not highlight the beauty of this juniper. Here is the plant after cleaning           The most interesting point is definitely the tight curve on the trunk where live vein and dry wood have a twist of almost 180 degrees.     I always imagined to uplift the plant in order to place this curve at the top and make a bunjin style bonsai. From the careful analysis of the nebari I realized that raising the plant would be difficult if not impossible: the wood is quantitatively smaller than the trunk and the bulk of the root system is positioned on the wrong side compared to a possible vertical positioning of the trunk.   …and so, if it is not possible to lift, […]

Visiting the garden of master M.Kimura – February 2015

Visiting the garden of master M.Kimura – February 2015 Here are some pics taken during my visit to Master M.Kimura’s garden in February 2015:    

This juniper owned by “Franchi Bonsai”, was the subject of the demo held by master Minoru Akiyama in February 2012 at the exhibition “Sotto il cielo d’inverno” (“Under the Winter Sky”) in Pescia (Italy) at Franchi’s Bonsai Center. On this occasion I had the honour and the pleasure to assist the Maestro throughout the work. Let’s start with the choice of this tree: it was a quite big juniper chinensis. The vegetation was vigorous, abundant and so dense that you could not even see the trunk.   It was impossible to have any idea of the styling development unless we thinned out the vegetation. Unfortunately, there was little time and a lot of work. Better to get started quickly!   The master began by cutting the big redundant branches in search of movement and valuable branches. I followed the master in all phases: from pruning to cleaning the trunk, from creating the shari and jin to applying the wire.   After a few hours of work here is the final result: In order to help the tree recover soon, and to leave different styling option for the future, the Master preferred to keep more branches than strictly necessary.   After […]

Junioerus Chinensis var.Itoigawa

This Juniper chinensis var.itoigawa, owned by the Franchi Bonsai company, is a recently restored specimen after a long period in which the tree has only been pinched. Over time, the growth and containment of vegetation has caused the foliage to become so thick that it has closed all spaces. In this situation, it was necessary to clean, select and wire the vegetation in order to restore order to the branches. Maintaining the original front and appearance of the plant, the work begins by cleaning the bark and vegetation. The subsequent selection of the branches is simple and is based on the elimination of weak and too long branches. The apex replacements and the restoration of the bifurcations are already sufficient to begin the wiring. Starting with the bottom branch, I open up the vegetation with the help of copper wire. as I move upwards towards the top branches, I deepen the branching selection. In the positioning of the branching I prefer the exposure to the light of every single tuft of vegetation, trying at the same time to give volume and shape to as many branches as possible. Below are the photos of the work:               […]

CARPINUS COREANA

This week’s work is on a Carpinus Coreana from the Franchi Bonsai company. The bonsai, in semi-cascade style, has now reached the end of the season, giving us a beautiful autumn foliage with colours ranging from yellow to orange. After manually removing the last remaining leaves, the hornbeam highlights the entire branching structure. As this is a recently arrived plant it is not possible for me to know the date of its previous shaping. Spring pruning has further intensified the density of the vegetation. At the moment the peripheral branching is fine but untidy with many small branches crossing each other. The first step is a rough selection of the branches: I proceed with apex replacements, thinning out the bifurcations and shortening or eliminating straight, cylindrical branches. As is often the case, I don’t decide to work too drastically and therefore prefer not to cut too many branches in order to offer a well-branched end result. I also decide not to proceed with a total wiring but only with a tidying up done by pruning in order to keep the appearance as natural as possible. The wire, if used, will only be used in cases where it is necessary to […]

Visiting the Shunka en 2015

Here are some photos taken during my visit to Master Kunio Kobayashi’s Shunka en in February 2015: