Page 22 - BSAM 2018 Q2

Above; Three details. The top dressing is “white moss,” lichens that are fruticose, foliose, moss-like and lichenized
fungi. This special Japanese preparation aesthetically enhances the value of SABI, with its antique appearance and timeless patina.
who understand the passion for nature and have a poetic feeling. They are collectors of stones, objects of art to display in tokonomas, ceramics, and antiques in general. The Chinese bunjin is still present in Chinese Penjing, and is very refined and even more minimalist than the Japanese one.
Even ikebana was much loved especially in antiquity, in styles that recall free-form painting. The bunjin spirit is also seen in the way of doing ikebana and enjoying the beauty of flowers, indifferent to worldly things; this is why ikebana is free and non-formal, sometimes even without technique. Sometimes, a composition with rare or extravagant flowers, provides forms rich in formality.
The bunjin tree should be a work that best expresses Japanese beauty. According to Uhaku (Susumu) Sudo, the second headmaster of the keido school of display, and the first disciple of the grand master Katayama, bunjin can also be considered a way of life, a path to achieve illumination through bonsai. He concludes that we can make bonsai by thanking to be alive and respecting life and nature. Bunjin is not an art form because it is alive, changeable in time, fleeting. In order to realize a bunjin it is important to know the concept of beauty of the void. Emptiness is beautiful because it unlimitedly accepts everything in the universe; in the void, everyone can express what is heartfelt. The bunjin must find space in the void but does not fill it, it must suggest but not tell.
A Juniperus sabina called il Pellegrino
The subject of this article is called il Pellegrino. It is a Juniperus sabina harvested in the Alps in 2002. The earliest photo of this tree is from 2010. Then I worked it in small steps for 12 years until the Rome exhibition
in 2014 where you see it in a tokonoma.
I showed the photos to Masahiko Kimura in 2017,
through Alessandro Bonardo, an apprentice that I introduced to Kimura in 2016. The master found it an exceptional piece, just because of the nature of the trunk, so thin and refined, that he made a drawing for me and he explained to Alessandro how to do it, who then executed these changes with me in August 2017. The master made two drawings, one normal, that is of the typical bunjin, the other very special, saying that for him it would be the best solution, a design suitable for such a special bunjin. In the first drawing Kimura proposed the classic interpretation of a Bunjin, that is, what all the masters would do, with the slender figure of 80 cm, the crown at the top and the cascading Ochi-eda branch: a beautiful shape. However, for him the exceptional material deserved a unique styling, with a unique design, never seen before. The genius of the design in the second drawing that he advised be performed—even if unusual and difficult to accept—is precisely the exaltation of the wabi-sabi aspect of the bonsai, a contained and discrete attitude while at the forefront of a unique solution. Veiled and in the true beauty of the void, it is very contemporary at the same time.
As you know, the beauty of junipers is in the movement of the live vein even more than the sculptural quality of the shari, especially if it twists repeatedly in the trunk. Nursery materials for admission to Kokufu-ten must have at least three turns of the trunk. In yamadori material, it is a characteristic difficult and rare to find. This bunjin has a very thin vein, and although it is yamadori, it turns 5 times around the trunk!
Alessandro, who is in his second year of apprentice- ship with Kimura, made a perfect job based on the master’s drawing, which Kimura greatly appreciated. Kimura thinks il Pellegrino is my most beautiful bonsai!
The ABCs of bonsai
Il Pellegrino was Class B material, but with Kimura’s design, although physically executed by Alessandro, became a Class A tree. Class A bonsai are rare, such
20 | BCI | April/May/June 2018