How to Make the Perfect Bonsai Display

All right guys, welcome back to a brand new episode of Bonsai U. This time around we're doing something a little different here in the workshop at ACA in Kyoto and that is we're going to be taking a look at a bonsai display table that was recently sent to me all the way from Belgium. Now this stand was made by a buddy of mine in Belgium named David. He runs drbonsaitables.com and he reached out to me I believe a little over a year ago at this point to see about collaborating on building a stand for use here at ACA in Kyoto in our Tokonoma with one if not many of our bonsai here. So he and I went back and forth over email over the last year working out all of the details coming up with a concept you know based on our Tokonoma here as well as the trees that I have in my collection and he came up with this really cool design and he built the stand out for me and shipped it here and as you can see it's just arrived it's in this box and we are going to unbox it in this episode but more importantly we're going to take a look at the craftsmanship of this stand the process behind the decisions as to the style of this stand and then we're going to be setting up at least one display in our Tokonoma here and I'm going to walk you through not only the build of the Tokonoma itself and the different components there and my thoughts behind that but also how we came up again with a concept for this stand to put in that Tokonoma with specific bonsai. So without further ado let's cut this box open and see what this stand looks like. All right so this was definitely packaged very very well it looks like everything made it intact but we won't know for sure until I cut this off of here when we pull the stand out of the box so let's check it out. All right so before we crack open the box here let's just admire the craftsmanship and build of the box itself. This box is custom made for this particular stand so it fits it perfectly but the woodworking on the box here is just unbelievable. All the seams are beautiful it's a work of art unto itself and it's got David's stamp here on the top which I think is super cool. It also has this really amazing handle on the front side here this is not a cheap piece of material this is really nice as are the buckles here so let's pop this bad boy open and actually see what the stand looks like. All right so as was expected the quality of this stand is absolutely spectacular. Everything from the quality of the wood that was used which I believe in this case is mahogany here that's a pretty standard type of wood that David tends to use for these darker stands as well as the quality of the joinery all of the lines all of the details within the stand they're all incredible and I would say that a stand of this level would not be out of place at an exhibition like the Kokufu or the Taikan 10 here in Japan. As a matter of fact in the future if we ever put client trees in the Kokufu 10 this may be a stand that we very well use for displaying that tree in the show. Now you can tell size-wise on this stand this is a basically kind of Chuhin size stand and the reason we went with this size is because of the limitations of our Tokonoma here at Eiseien Kyoto. Additionally the style of the stand as well was decided based on the Tokonoma here as well and I want to walk you through that full thought process. All right so here is our Tokonoma at Eiseien Kyoto. Now this is not a conventional Tokonoma it's a concept that I came up with after seeing several examples of different things that I liked and then basically combining all of those things together into one format here. So first and foremost let's talk about the general shape of the Tokonoma. So traditional Tokonomas are basically rectangular meaning that all of the elements within the Tokonoma are in a rectangular shape from the typical kind of tatami mat that's at the base of most Tokonomas to the drop downs from the ceiling that allow you to put the indirect lighting or recessed lighting behind them. Our Tokonoma on the other hand has this round sort of moon motif to it and that obviously was done intentionally. This is something that I'd seen done in a few homes and a few gardens around Japan especially here in Kyoto and it's a concept that I really really liked and being at our entrance here to the house it's really nice to have this sort of round motif because in Japanese culture there's something called the Enso which is tied to Buddhism but it's basically in reference to kind of the circle of life. So essentially it invites good luck into whatever structure whether that be a home or a business if you have sort of round motifs. So we've got this in the entrance here and then inside the house we also have an additional round motif in the kitchen to kind of tie everything together. But in any case what I wanted to do here was create kind of like a moon shape. It's not a full moon necessarily but it's got that rounded shape to it like the moon and with that I wanted to put gold leaf on the background here. Typically most Tokonomas are going to be much more subdued than this. This is a little bit of kind of a gaudy look for a Tokonoma but the reason that I wanted to go with the gold here was kind of twofold. The initial sort of influence on this was seeing at the Kokufu-ten some of the sales booths at the green club in particular Mansei-en which is Mr. Kato's nursery and Shinji Suzuki's display table or sales booth. They use what are called Kin-byobu which are basically gold covered folding screens behind the bonsai and I always thought that that really made the trees pop in a spectacular way and the reason they were doing that was because it was influenced by what you see from the Edo period in places like Nijo Castle here in Kyoto where you have gold leaf fusuma like sliding doors that have pine motifs on them. The trees that are drawn on those fusuma really pop against that gold backdrop and that's why they do that at their sales booths up at the Kokufu-ten. It really just makes them look, I don't know, gaudy is not the right word, just makes them pop in a very, you know, how should I say this, not like a gaudy kind of thing like, you know, a golden toilet like you might find in Donald Trump's home in New York, but in a way that sort of elevates the beauty of the trees. It doesn't detract from them, it sort of makes them pop and pushes them forward, right. So I wanted to create kind of a similar vibe here at Eisei in Kyoto. The second reason that I wanted to go with this backdrop here is in tying in with our moon theme with the rounded tokonoma here. This actually creates a backdrop that looks like the moon to some degree. The way that it lights up here with the indirect lighting from the interior and also the sun from the outside which you can probably see the level rising and falling as the clouds drift by outside. It gets a little brighter, a little darker in here, but it allows for the light to kind of bounce off the back wall and depending on the time of day, depending on how much shadow is in here, depending on whether or not we turn that indirect lighting on or off. I'll just give you an example here. Right now it's on and now it's off. It has a totally different vibe in here. So you can say maybe it looks like the sun at some parts of the day and other times of the day it looks like moonlight, right? So depending on what you're going for display-wise, you can have either or sort of reflected from that backdrop. And this is in fact gold leaf. It's actually a wallpaper that's made or coated with a little bit of gold leaf. So it is actually true gold which is really cool but you know not crazy expensive or anything. It just looks really nice and the square motifs are also in reference to the fusuma doors that you see at Nijo Castle here in Kyoto. So there's a tie-in with the local culture here and the local history in the city. Now if we come down to the base of the tokonoma here, this is one giant piece of lacquerware. Now I think when most people think of lacquerware, they think of like black coloration. And initially when we met with a company that was going to be building out the tokonoma, I told them I want a black piece of lacquerware for the base of the tokonoma. And the woman who was running the company said I don't recommend that you do that because this base is actually floating. If you look down below, there's what's called nagari wood. It's like spoon scooped wood essentially underneath here. So this lacquerware base is actually floating. It's not attached to the floor. And her thought was if you go full black with something like this, it actually will feel too heavy visually and just I don't know sense-wise you'll feel like it's just too heavy in here. Like it's going to crush down to the floor. So her recommendation was we go with just a slightly different color. And what we opted to go with was something called budoiro, which is basically grape color. So it may not be translating super well in the video, but this is in fact a very very dark purple color. And in some lightings it looks more purple. In other lightings it looks a little more like navy blue, almost black. But because we didn't go super super pitch black with it, it has a little bit more lightness to it visually. Not only color-wise but just like weight-wise. It feels like you could pick it up a little more easily than something heavy and black. The reason we went with the lacquerware though was because I wanted to create a base here that would reflect the light and the gold from the backdrop here onto it and reflect out. So you could create a scene across here with like a visualization of maybe water for example. Where the sun or the moon is reflecting off of that water and sort of drawing you into the scene. And it really does a good job of that. When you walk through the front space here, which again it may be a little difficult to tell in the video, but as you walk through the front space here that light sort of shifts along the base here with the tokonoma. And you get kind of a feeling of it being the sun or again the moon reflecting from water. And this also allows us to do kind of interesting displays in here too. A little less conventional type displays. Now off to the left hand side over there. This is the last like really important element in the tokonoma. This is in fact the tokobashira or tokonoma hashira which is like the pole of the tokonoma. And this kind of ties everything together. Now this pole is what's called a shibori maruta. It's a piece of cedar that was collected in the mountains north of Kyoto. But it's dried out and created in a very specific way that makes it have these sort of fissures and ridges on it. This is not man-made. This is a natural process that happens. You can also buy these man-made for much cheaper. Where basically it's a really weird process. They go up in the mountains and they actually cover the trunks of these trees while they're still growing with little bitty like they look like chopsticks. But they're kind of zigzaggy plastic chopsticks. They'll cover the whole trunk with it. Wrap it up with I don't know if it's cheesecloth or some sort of you know really thin like fishing wire. And as the tree grows into those pieces of chopstick it creates these fissures. It's actually a lot more involved than the natural shibori maruta. But the natural shibori maruta which is what this is tend to be much more revered and much more expensive. Because to get a natural one to look like this it's like one out of every 100 trunks at most is going to have this natural look to it. Whereas you can mass produce the production ones right. So I guess from that perspective that's why they're significantly cheaper. But in any case we opted to go for this again to tie in with the local culture here. Because Kitayama sugi or Kitayama cryptomeria northern mountain cryptomeria from the northern mountains of Kyoto are very sought after here. They're used in homes and buildings all around Kyoto. So we wanted to tie in with that. But also I wanted to create kind of a mix of different elements here in the sense of the concept of what's called shingyo-so. Which is formal, semi-formal and informal. Most tokonomas here in Japan are set up in a way where you select one category and build everything in the tokonoma in that one category. So the whole thing if you want to go the shin route the formal route would be much more formal than what you see here. So for example if we went much more formal we could still keep the gold backdrop. We could still keep the black lacquerware off to this side. But the tokobashida off to the side would also need to be more of a square piece. Possibly the same lacquer color maybe even as the lacquer base here. So a darker coloration much more square much harsher lines and that would be a formal or shin tokonoma. If you wanted to go the gyo route which is the semi-formal you would have maybe a mix of different elements. Which is kind of what we have here. Although we've got kind of extreme ends of the spectrum here with the really formal backdrop. The really formal base here and then the sort of semi-formal pole off to the side. But we also have the nagari wood down at the bottom which is much more of an informal. Which is going to be the shingyo sou. The sou element informal. If you want to go full informal you would probably have let's say a tatami mat at the bottom here. Simple stucco backdrop off to the side. The tokobashida would be a natural piece of wood that has a lot of movement to it. Much more natural than the shibori maruta here. And that would give you that informal vibe to the tokonoma. So in our case here we mixed a whole bunch of different elements together. But I think the composite of them all in one unit here in one tokonoma actually works pretty well in my opinion.