The King and Queen 2025

 The Year is 2010, fifteen years ago. So much has changed since then. The collection was at the Clark Center for Japanese Art, The Hanford Bonsai Society was going full blast and I was Vice President. The second Toko-Kazari (Tokonoma Display) is in full swing and judging is finished.

The reason I bring up King and Queen, is from a display presented by Boon Manakitivipart. He didn't place but I thought the unique blend of trees in the display were something that I had never thought of in that way. The bold pine, stately and masculine along side the maple, soft, flowing and feminine. Being a red variety helped a lot. 

So I thought maybe I could combine the aspects of two of my trees, a pine and a maple and put together my own King and Queen.

First the pine. The tree was purchased from Ed Clark recently, and I could hardly wait to get it home to start working on it. I looked pretty stupid to fellow drivers going down the freeway with me holding the tree and spinning it around trying to find my front and where I was going to prune first. This is a pretty hairy tree.

The first cuts were made on the material. I find that the only way I can work on a Clark pine tree is to cut the needles. They are so strong and so long that small wiring is impossible.

The photo above shows the apex and what I was going to use to make an apex, basically three small branches. Those three branches were hooked to a fairly long remnant of last year's candle. It just way too long. 

So, I cut the top off and started over with some small branches below that junction. I liked the outcome much better than the original plan.

Let's move on to the maple.

The maple, Trident Maple, was purchased from Mike Saul at the Fresno Bonsai Swap meet in 2010. Over the years the tree has been pruned and wired.

In 2012 it went into this pot I purchased at a nursery in Cambria California. It had a very unique glaze that cratered during the firing process adding an element of texture to the pot.

Later, upon finding out how difficult it was to clean the nasty calcium stains on its surface I opted for a smoother glazed surface.

Upon deciding that I would turn this composition into a Shohin project, I started by identifying which parts were to be removed or shortened. I started by removing the bottom of the cascade branch. It was an unsightly "wye" anyway, so the bottom was removed. The branch covering the lower portion of the trunk was drastically reduced. To get it into a proper Shohin sized pot, the root mass would have to be reduced. Several years ago, I sustained some massive squirrel damage to the far-right side of the trunk. It was this area that I would inspect when removed from the pot. Sure enough, most of the rootage on that area had dried up and was no longer servicing the tree. I just lopped off a portion and did some rough carving on it and managed to get it into this Iker pot. This pot was the result of an exhaustive search for two months to find just the correct pot that would work for the tree. 

The tree was affixed in its new pot and received its first picture.

Today I composed the picture. Backwards as usual. I will begin working on a new photo soon with a different backdrop to capture the maple in a better light. I have a couple Shohin size scrolls on order to complete the picture and can update this thread then. I worked on the bump in the back and reduced that as well as a overall cutback of heavy branching and thinning.