Bonsai containers in Vietnam

In Vietnam potted plants are omnipresent and during my brief visit in 2016 I scrutinised every flower pot in my way. The containers were made of concrete, ceramic and stone. It seems that concrete pots were most common. They are used for larger trees and miniature landscapes. Some were painted with bright colours and looked rather tawdry. The examples shown in the images below are somewhat more sophisticated.

Needless to say, there were lots of ceramic pots. Most of them looked tacky. Images below show examples which looked particularly native.

There was one type of ceramic containers that I really liked. Initially, I saw them in a couple of antique shops in Hanoi and then I came across of a small collection in a private bonsai garden in Hoi An where I took the photos shown below. I am not sure if these containers were locally produced or imported. They could be either antique or vintage. I am not sure of their age because the deterioration of the glaze can be attributed to the low temperature firing used in their production. If these pots are earthenware than it’s just a matter of few decades for the glazes to start peeling off. The actual decoration on these pots is very crude, but the glaze deterioration gives them this aged look and the ephemeral rustic quality akin to wabi-sabi.

Finally, I saw a small number of containers carved out of stone and when I looked though my photos found only one shown below.

This post is probably a very incomplete survey of containers used for bonsai in Vietnam, but that’s all I got.

Bonsai pot stragglers from last year

A couple of medium size pots I made in 2017, which took a long time to fire in an electric kiln. The one on the left is rectangular with rounded corners and the one on the right is oval. Both are tests for one glaze over another.

Wood-fired bonsai pots made in 2017

2017 was uneventful for me in terms of bonsai or bonsai pot making. I made only ten bonsai pots last year, but those that are wood-fired are worth showing off. Below is probably the best pot I made last year. Decorated with rutile glaze.

Below is a pot with a Chinese cheng-yu proverb inscribed with underglaze.

The one below is decorated with a blue glaze that got altered by natural ash.

Below is an unglazed pot with natural ash formed on one side.

Last but not least, another unglazed pot made in Namban style.

Origins of Nanban pottery: Hội An, Vietnam

I was aware of Namban pottery for a long time, but since my trip to Japan in 2015 this interest became deeper. This fascination arose from the fact that Namban’s origins are shrouded in mystery and I am a person who likes to get to the bottom of things. The best explanation of Namban origins I found so far is here http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/namban-bonsai-pots.html.

South-East Asia has always been a suspect provenance of Namban pottery and last year, I made a Namban discovery of my own, while traveling in Vietnam. During a visit to the Museum of Folk Culture in Hội An, I came across of a ceramic piece that simply “screamed” Namban at me (see image below left). For comparison, the image below right is a contemporary piece of similar shape and size made by a renowned Japanese potter Yukizyou Nakano also known as “Gyozan”.

I learned at the museum that the pot has been made in the Thanh Hà village near Hội An. Potters of Thanh Hà village have been making functional low-fired unglazed pottery since the beginning of the 17th century. Nguyen Dynasty records of the time tell us that their wares have been transported by river to the nearby commercial port of Hoi An and from there exported to the coastal provinces of Central Vietnam and abroad. All this got me thinking and I realised that six historical occurrences took place at the same time, all of them at the beginning of the 17th century. Here they are:

1. Potters settle in Thanh Hà village near Hội An in Vietnam.

2. Hội An becomes the most important trade port in the East Vietnam Sea.

3. Tokugawa Ieyasu issues permits to Japanese merchants to trade with Vietnam.

4. A thriving Japanese trading settlement springs up in Hội An.

5. Increasing demand for rustic and unassuming ceramics for tea ceremony in Japan.

6. Earliest Namban pottery appears in Japan.

When the facts line up like that, Vietnamese provenance of some of the early Namban ceramics becomes quite plausible. I could also add here that the oldest extant Vietnamese ceramics have been found in Japan, in a tomb at Dazaifu and they date back to 1330. Vietnamese ceramics made in the 15th and 16th centuries also have been found in Okinawa, Nagasaki, Hakata, Osaka, Sakai and Hiroshima.

One architectural remainder of the former Japanese presence in Hội An is the Japanese Bridge. At the beginning of the 17th century Japanese merchants in Hội An were influential enough to build this bridge across the river to trade with the local residents (see the images below).

As a more general afterthought, I would like to finish this post with a photo of a lidded jar I saw in Vietnam and I hope you see the connection with the topic of this post. Lids of such jars were converted into bonsai containers known today as Namban.

Bonsai pot leftovers from last year

Images above show a couple of unglazed electric kiln fired pots I made last year. The one on the left is inspired by rectangular nanban pots, which are less common than the round ones. It was also the first time I tried a combination of slab and coil building to form a bonsai pot (dimensions 20 x 27 x 11 cm). This technique is used by some Japanese potters to make large bonsai pots. The pot on the right was my attempt to imitate this slip decoration technique that I’ve seen on some Chinese pots. This pot is small, about 10 cm in diameter.

My Fergus Stewart pot

This year’s AusBonsai Market held at Auburn Japanese Garden was great. My deep gratitude to the organizers. I was just curious about what’s new and one stall selling bonsai pots immediately got my attention. The first thoughts that came to my mind were wood-fired ceramics by a highly skilled potter, but not a career bonsai pot maker. All pots were on the larger side, round, skilfully thrown on a potter’s wheel. Some of them were about a meter in diameter! You have to be a potter to appreciate that. I had to know who the potter is and the stall owner was too happy to tell the story. A Scottish ceramic artist Fergus Stewart with a passion for wood-fired ceramics worked in Australia between 1981 and 2002. Around 1999 while working at the Strathnairn Ceramics Workshop in Canberra, Fergus Stewart was commissioned by a Canberra bonsai grower John Remmel to make a series of bonsai pots. The examples of pot shapes and glazes given by Remmel were illustrations from “Matsudaira Mame Bonsai Collection Album” published in 1975. Stewart had to develop several glazes to match the illustrations in the album. Most pots had either a chop mark “FS” or signed “Stewart”. It turns out that the lot of them was never used and ended up for sale in this year’s bonsai market. Many of the pots had no feet and looked more like your typical English handmade functional stoneware rather than bonsai containers. Perhaps this was the reason why this stall was largely ignored by the market crowd. It’s a shame because they are a product of great craftsmanship and would work with certain trees. Nevertheless, in some instances Stewart did manage to capture the essence of a bonsai pot and I simply could not resist buying one of those (see image below, round 6 x 40 cm).

By the way, Fergus Stewart is currently teaching ceramics and works in Lochinver, Scotland specializing in wood-fired and salt-glazed ceramics. It doesn’t look like he is making any bonsai pots these days.

The last wood-firing of the year

The wood-firing a fortnight ago was as uneventful as all others this year, probably due to a token participation on my part. It’s like a lottery you see, many tickets are a better chance to win. Many pots in the kiln are a better chance of getting one that’s beautiful and unique. My pots this year were just passable. Two of them from the last wood-firing are shown below.

My workshop with Naoki Maeoka

I write a bonsai blog, but never mention my bonsai in it. Seems dishonest, but my bonsai collection is quite ordinary and I don’t make it a secret. This time, I have to show one of my trees because it got an unexpected makeover in a workshop with Naoki Maeoka this month (see my blog post about Naoki here http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/bonsai-artist-naoki-maeoka.html). First, a quick rundown on this tree's prior history. It is a Lebanese Cedar (Cedrus libani). I bought it as a five-year-old starter stock plant from a bonsai nursery in 2007 (leftmost image below). By the end of 2008 I made a number of severe bends to its trunk (image below). In 2012, its growth was stunned by the grubs of the Punctate Flower Chafer (see my blog post about this pest here http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/pest-of-month-punctate-flower-chafer.html). Believe it or not, the pot in the image marked ‘2012’ contained 24 fully grown grubs of this beetle. The rightmost image shows how this tree looked like last month. To be frank, I neglected it for the past couple of years.

This month, I took this tree to the workshop with Naoki and the leftmost image below shows it after the workshop. I must say, it was an unexpected outcome. The centre image below shows this tree digitally re-potted. The angle of the trunk is different and the foliage pad is adjusted accordingly. The tree is planted in a nanban style pot made by me specifically for this tree. The pot is slightly too big, but at this stage, I am not willing to reduce the root system any further. The rightmost image shows my impression of the tree’s future look.

First of this year’s wood-fired pots

I continue to dabble in making bonsai pots, but my output is negligible as usual. It becomes especially obvious when I see hundreds of pots coming out of the kiln (image above) and only two of them are mine (images below).

Images above show two round wood-fired stoneware pots. The one on the left is blue glaze 17 x 8.5 cm and the one on the right is rutile glaze 14.5 x 6 cm.

Images above show another two pots. They are electric kiln stoneware. The one on the left is round, carving and underglaze decoration, celadon glaze, 14 x 5 cm. The one on the right is free-form square with rounded corners, iron oxide and rutile glaze 11 x 3 cm.

These pots are not exceptional, but they are an improvement to the previous lot (see http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/first-pots-this-year.html).