The New British Shohin Association Website and Blog is now up and running. Lots of great images in the gallery to flick through for all the shohin lovers out there.
It is now easy to join as well. I have been threatening to do it for years and took the plunge today and paid via paypal. I tried to get over to the Shohin Off Show this year, but a death in the family changed all my plans. However I do plan to make it over to the 2012 Show.
Link to site by clicking on the image below.
Ben brought this little Cotoneaster along to the workshop last weekend. While Peter was busy doing the deadwood on several Larch, Ben and I had a look at this little fellow. I could have sworn I took a before photo but I can’t one one of it now! Anyway, this is it after we gave the few pruning scars a little bit of refinement with the dremel to make them more natural looking. Some fine wire was added to get the young branches positioned in the right areas. Next year this will fill out rapidly and create a lovely little tree.
Even though I’m trying to cut down on the size of my collection, I just couldn’t pass up this little Cork Bark Elm. I have loads of Corkies, big and small after field growing them over the last 10 years. So why add this one to the collection??
This was another sickly tree that I bought cheap early last year. This was it today.
This was the tree sitting on the previous owners bench in April 2010. The botton left branch was useless and when I got it home the top of the tree was badly cut with wire on the branches. Most of these would have had to be removed and regrown.
As it was cheap material and I quite liked the idea of a smaller tree, I opted to remove the whole apex leaving one branch. I put it into a bigger pot with grit to make up for the poor mix it was in.
Once through last Winter I transferred it into the current Walsall Ceramic pot. As you can see, the jin at the top has sprung back to a more upright position that will have to be altered again. The line of the shari will need improved. It’s a bit ‘out there’ in its style, but I like it. I will try and get a bit of definition into the foliage next time I work on the tree.
This was it a few months ago. The foliage had grown well since then.
Am I the only person to find the sizing classifications of bonsai a real pain?
Everywhere I look on the Internet I see different classifications. Some are similar and some have no resemblance at all. Some are classes in themselves and others call the same thing a sub category of a size class.
Peter, from Willowbog Bonsai, queried my sizing of a Trident Maple I have in another post. He was spot on, I had it down as a Kifu size tree when Chuhin would be more accurate. I could also call it Katade-mochi!
The Japanese Maple I call Chuhin could be called Kifu , although some would say Kifu is a sub category of Chuhin and others don’t even mention kifu as a size at all.
From what little I know about all this, in Japan they don’t worry too much about sizes and measuring tapes are never seen at exhibition. It’s more down to the feel of the tree than the dimensions.
I know there are some very knowledgeable folk out there reading this, either for amusement or through friendship 😀 , Id be interested to here your views.
Here are some of the sizes I have stumbled across on the net.
I have added Peter’s and my own comments from the other post below to explain how this topic became my focus for the morning 🙂
is Kifu not between shohin and chuhin ?? surely that trident is a fairly big tree ??
they all look very well !! lots of nice maples throughout the UK lost following the last 2 winters !!
Sizes confuse me a tad to be honest. Everything I read contradicts! Some don’t have Kifu at all. I have done a bit more googling this morning and have come to the decision that no one agrees on this at all. The Japanese Maple above, that I have called Chuhin, is 28 cm tall and could be called Kifu or Chuhin. The Trident is 48cm tall and, as you say would be better called Chuhin as well. However it could also be called Katade-mochi! There seems to be about 3 different size classification for Bonsai out there. Considering how complicated bonsai is, this doesn’t surprise me! 
I think I’ll just stick to calling the Trident ‘Stratford’ to differentiate it from the others 
Might be worth a post on the blog about this 
I sympathise with what you say !! I was lucky enough to win best Kifu at the N.Trophy a few years back with a P. densiflora that I thought was shohin , talking to Marco about it later he claimed to have never heard of Kifu despite his time in Japan ! many years ago in B.Today there was an interesting article that had been taken from Kinbon, where a few Japanese masters got together to discuss what constituted bunjin style , the consensus seemed to me, at least, to be that a tree had to ” feel ” like a bunjin to the viewer !!!! never mind thinking about style criteria , I think the size issue is a bit like that as well , no matter what a tape measure says, the bonsai has to ” feel ” like a shohin , chuhin or whatever , John Armitage reports that he has never seen a tape measure used in shohin bonsai shows in Japan , they are more interested in just enjoying the trees than worrying about size , of course , the other side to that is that I suppose generally folk know what is appropriate for each show and what it not !! I good example is bunjin style in the shohin category , this style of bonsai can be still shohin and yet be much taller than the 22 or 25 cms height limit !! alternatively I believe that a tree that in all respects seems ” big ” can be within the height limit for chuhin and yet not really be appropriate for the category .
confusing ? perhaps just to western minds !!!
This is the little Shohin Maple that you might recognise from the latest series of NIBS School videos. Peter used it frequently to point out issues with branch structure. It has just opened in leaf again after defoliation.
Here’s a link to a previous post about this tree. Shohin Maple Update
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