Penjing a little beauty

[Bill S]

Wills gonna love ya for that one.

 

[Grant Bowie]

Hm,

What is Penjing.

Penjing is the Chinese Cantonese word for Landscape.(pen being the shallow marble tray. Shuipen is like Suiban in Japanese)

The landscape can include trees, rocks, accompanying plants, bridges, houses, pagodas, people, animals, boats etc. You could have a lanscape without any plants at all; ie just rocks etc .

You could have a sea lanscape with rocks and plants representing islands.

You could have a mixed planting.

You can have Tree Penjing. This is more closely related to bonsai.

The Chinese have been practising Penjing for around 2,000 years whereas the Japanese borrowed the artform etc somewhere around 900 to 1,100 along with the alphabet (Kanji) and lots of other culture.

There are various traditional schools of Penjing in China and this "Clip and Grow" technique is from the Lingnan school.

Anther school specialise in "stump style/Sprout)",.

It is possible that Penjing were used as a living map of a rulers region; Mountain over here, river there, farms here etc .

Things are changing in China rapidly as we speak and there are now highly organised shows where the trees are highly groomed, wired, styled and are indistinguishable from Bonsai.

Also due to various invasions/occupations by by Colonial/conquering armies including Japan bonsai rather than Penjing is practised in Taiwan and some parts of China that were occupied by the Japanese from the early 1900s till 1945.

The Chinese asthetic is certainly different to the Japan asthetic and the western interpretation of the Japanese asthetic.

Hope this helps.

More reading here.http://www.artofbonsai.org/feature_articles/penjing.php

Grant

 

[Kaztan]

All very philosophical but I find that I prefer the description set out in something like Wikipedia. If we all go off using different words to describe the same thing confusion will be the result. Lets all stick to the accepted definition of styles.

 

[mat]

All very philosophical but I find that I prefer the description set out in something like Wikipedia. If we all go off using different words to describe the same thing confusion will be the result. Lets all stick to the accepted definition of styles.

Accepted by whom? I'm sure there are some Lignan masters who have not read the chapter in most Bonsai books that lays out the basic "accepted" styles. They have their own styles which may or may not correlate to the Japanese versions. Just because you've found a narrow description of "penjing" that suits you doesn't mean that everyone else should as well.

 

[Si Nguyen]

All very philosophical but I find that I prefer the description set out in something like Wikipedia. If we all go off using different words to describe the same thing confusion will be the result. Lets all stick to the accepted definition of styles.

What confusion? There's no confusion here?
Who wrote the Wikipedia article?

 

[Si Nguyen]

Hm,

What is Penjing....

Grant

Thanks for that little bit of penjing history Grant. I find it very interesting how bonsai got started. I think the art of pottery must have came first before penjing or bonsai. And it must have taken them hundreds of years to go from a pot to a tray. Pots were already around for many other uses, so it would be easy to assume that they would use the pots for their trees as well. But trays, now that they have to specifically design just for penjing. In Vietnam though, there were usage of big trays for keeping ornamental fishes a long time ago. This might have predated the use of trays for plants. In fact, the art of penjing in Vietnam had always involved very big trays with a lot of water and small fishes. Now we never see the fishes in pictures, but they are there. I have seen these penjings when I was a kid in Vietnam in the 60's, and I always see the little fishes in there. So I am saying that maybe ornamental fish keeping came before penjing. The Vietnamese style of penjing (hon non bo) is actually very advanced and not very well known outside of Vietnam. China did dominate Vietnam on and off for more than a thousand year, so the art might have came from China, or the other way around. Vietnam was an exporter of pottery to China thousands of years ago. But there is no reason to think that the big trays were exported or imported. They were just too big and too heavy to ship.
Interesting!

 

[Grant Bowie]

Why are you calling this tree a Penjing? this word surely describes a tray scenery or a tree with a rocky outcrop. Penjing is not a tree size.

Correct.Size has nothing to do with it. Never the less it is a penjing.

 

[Grant Bowie]

Hi Joe, what most inexperienced bonsai people don't know is that a "bad" bonsai design often does not have to be redesigned, especially if it's a new planting. Take good care of it for 30 years, let it grow out, clip back, fill in some negative spaces with branches, develop some age and patina, and it will be beautiful. That's what this Chinese gentleman did. Now if you don't have 30 years, or if you must have an instant bonsai, then by all means, rip it out and do it over again. There's nothing wrong with that either. The trick is to know when your design is good enough and don't have any fatal flaws that would get worse over time. But to a typical Chinese bonsai artist, there is even no such thing as a fatal flaw to a tree, because they like all the weird lines, the weirder the better. Some time it works some time it doesn't. It's a lot harder that it looks.

Very true about the fatal flaw. I have seen some dreadful root system tangles that I would love to tease out(I am a very traditional Bonsai person really) but many of the non Japanese asians I have met seem to love it.

 

[Grant Bowie]

Hello SI

I love reading your posts. You offer tremendous insight to this hobby. I do this for personal enjoyment and try to follow the RULES but I now feel that I have to like what I'm doing first.

I love the hobby because it teaches patience and gives me an opportunity to imagine. The masters of this hobby are true artists and I will most likely never come close to their accomplishments. Neither I will ever be able to paint a Picaso etc. but when I look at my grandchidrens' paintings, I get a good feeling.

Yes, there are rules, but sometimes people go over the top. Bottom line, enjoy yourself in the journey of bonsai. It isn't the destination, it's the journey.

Thanks again for your insight and posts.

Another saying is "Seek what the master sought; not the path that he took".

Sometimes there is too much interest in the techniques and teaching rather than the vaguer goal.

 

[Grant Bowie]

All very philosophical but I find that I prefer the description set out in something like Wikipedia. If we all go off using different words to describe the same thing confusion will be the result. Lets all stick to the accepted definition of styles.

I am not sure why penjing challenges/confronts some people.

I suppose it is harder to describe, teach, learn and therefore avoided.

 

[Grant Bowie]

Thanks for that little bit of penjing history Grant. I find it very interesting how bonsai got started. I think the art of pottery must have came first before penjing or bonsai. And it must have taken them hundreds of years to go from a pot to a tray. Pots were already around for many other uses, so it would be easy to assume that they would use the pots for their trees as well. But trays, now that they have to specifically design just for penjing. In Vietnam though, there were usage of big trays for keeping ornamental fishes a long time ago. This might have predated the use of trays for plants. In fact, the art of penjing in Vietnam had always involved very big trays with a lot of water and small fishes. Now we never see the fishes in pictures, but they are there. I have seen these penjings when I was a kid in Vietnam in the 60's, and I always see the little fishes in there. So I am saying that maybe ornamental fish keeping came before penjing. The Vietnamese style of penjing (hon non bo) is actually very advanced and not very well known outside of Vietnam. China did dominate Vietnam on and off for more than a thousand year, so the art might have came from China, or the other way around. Vietnam was an exporter of pottery to China thousands of years ago. But there is no reason to think that the big trays were exported or imported. They were just too big and too heavy to ship.
Interesting!

I thought about mentioning Hon non bo but I thought that might be a bridge too far.

We have lots of Vietnamese guys doing bonsai in Australia and I do mean bonsai. They gravitated towards very traditional bonsai in Australia although one characteristic they have kept from Vietnam is they love HUGE bonsai.

 

[Grant Bowie]

Anyhow here endeth the sermon.

All I wished to do with this initial post was to share a beautiful small tree and a wonderfull old man with people.

Grant Bowie

 

[Joedes3]

Grant
Thank you for the post. I really liked the tree. Hopefully, it will inspire some to try something different. Joe

 

[JudyB]

Very informative thread. So interesting to learn hidden history, like the fish tray nugget.

 

[Bill S]

Not a sermon Grant, another atta boy for a good thread.

 

[Grant Bowie]

Hi all,

It is with extreme sadness that I must report the death of the Penjing artist. He was 78 years old and just died unexpectedly three weeks ago. A great loss.

I was so inspired after meeting him that 6 weeks ago I started my first Clip and Grow Penjing. A Cinese elm of course from nursery stock that had been sitting around for about 20 years and I either grew from seed or root cutting.

Grant