This antique tree was collected some years ago by Anton Nijhuis of Vancouver Island, Canada, and was recently brought to Oregon, USA. We reworked it here last week for a client. The dynamism of the low descending branch and its bumping movement definitely made for a fun styling. We couldn’t wait to finish it!

Curiously, the entire tree is a rooted branch. It has somewhat larger needles than most Mountain Hemlocks have, and Anton said that it seemed like a strain of hemlock localized to that one mountain, and he’d not seen it elsewhere.

Here’s a photo essay of our restyling. Enjoy!

This was the Mountain Hemlock before we did anything.

…after shortening a few jins and tipping the tree to our new inclination, and finding our front. Like so many front choices, it was a balancing of goods and bads…

Bobby refining a jin.

…wiring from the bottom up…