Page 12 - BSAM 2015 Q1

First 3 photos; Before, during and after Ryan Neil’s “im- possible” demonstration tree. Next 3 photos; Salvatore Liporace wiring his demo tree followed by the “before” photo and the final result.
Demonstrations on Sunday
Ryan Neil: The tree on which Ryan had to work was not a gift: it is an ‘impossible’ Taxus cuspidata (yew). Its trunk is straight and has an inverted conicity or inverse taper. Some dead branches were cut off years
ago and left a thickening on the trunk.
Ryan explained what he was going to do in order to
create a pre-bonsai out of this. First he worked on the deadwood to make the trunk more acceptable: bend- ing some branches, cutting off other ones, bending again and wiring. Meanwhile, Ryan (as usual) con- tinued explaining what he was doing and why, and of course he answered all questions that arose from the visitors.
Finally, he changed the inclination of the tree and in the end he created a really beautiful pre-bonsai out of this yew, a tree on which many demonstrators would not have preferred to work...Well done Ryan!
Salvatore Liporace: On Sunday, Salvatore demon- strated on a pine that was collected years ago in The Massif Central, an elevated region in south-central France. It is not a very big tree, but it is a really old yamadori full of character.
During his demonstration, Salvatore taught us how to reduce the length of the needles from pines. Very interesting lessons, which are very much appreci- ated by the visitors. Two assistants, Rui Ferreira from Portugal and Gilles Rigal from France, worked for three hours with Salvatore wiring and putting all the branches into place.
As we know, Salvatore is only satisfied when every- thing is perfect, so the final result was a really beautiful
bonsai with everything in place.
Seok Ju Kim: The tree Seok Ju Kim styled on Sun- day, was a Pinus sylvestris. This tree and its branches are younger than the tree Seok worked on Saturday. Therefore, on Sunday he used aluminium wire in- stead of copper wire. As the thickness of the branches to bend are 6 to 7 cm diameter and the main branch is more than one meter long, we again could expect some spectacular bending.
With much care, Seok wrapped the branches with the same black elastic band he used on Saturday and wired the branches with thick aluminium wires before starting to carefully bend the branches little by little. Also the foliage on the branches at the top of the tree are situated too far from the trunk, so more bending was necessary.
Again, Seok Ju Kim showed how to carefully bend the incredibly thick branches, using his special winch (see photo on bottom left).
The final work resulted in a compact pre-bonsai with all the foliage close to the trunk. Everybody should have seen Seok Ju Kim at work to believe the results.
10 | BCI | April/May/June 2015
Last 3 photos; Seok Ju Kim’s demonstration tree, before and after. The special manual winch to bend branches in action.