Hirohisa Shimizu Stands—Part II

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Hirohisa Shimizu

Hirohisa Shimizu and an old Japanese Pot by Sui-Seki

This is a very unusual design for a stand with the curved legs running around the stand.  Made from rosewood with an incredible clean finish showing lots of depth due to the number of coatings of finishing material that we assume to be varnish or shellac of some sort.

The pot is a rather old Japanese pot but not from a famous maker – therefore translate that to affordable.  There aren’t many pots in the size range, or frankly any, that use this double layered approach thus creating the secondary wall utilizing cutouts to form a pattern on all four sides of the pot.

We love to find pots that at one point in their lives were “white” but now display an aged patina look illustrated in this photo as an almost “dirty” finish.  Pots like this are getting harder to find and especially so when they are barely 8cm in width.

So let’s take a few more looks at this stand.

Hirohisa Shimizu (14.5 x 2.8cm)

The first thing we liked about this stand is that it is square. Square stands are simply not easy to find.  At first the decoration of the feet can make you back up and question if it is too heavy or not.  What we like about it, see the stand with the pot, is that the two center decorations seem to lift up and support the white pot.  Also, the thickness of the supports – being thin – don’t add too much weight to the feel of the stand itself.

Hirohisa Shimizu

Can you image attempting to carve the rosewood on this stand to perfectly match the feet in all four directions.  He is a true carving artist in our opinion.

Hirohisa Shimizu - Flowers inlaid in Copper

One of the most attractive features of this stand are the three flowers inlaid in the top. Each flower is made from copper and add just another touch of delicateness to the stand.

Hirohisa Shimizu

As with all of his stands, they are shipped in a kiri-wood box for protection.  This must be his design because we are not use to seeing this horizontal border underneath the lip and attached to the door of the box.

Part III tomorrow.

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Hirohisa Shimizu Stands—Part I

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Hirohisa Shimizu, ShiShimaru

For a number of years on the bonsai site http://www.bonsai-master.com, now a dead link, we reviewed numerous stands by Shimizu Hirohisa.  The costs of his stands were higher than most so we elected not to purchase any.  That changed this year as we acquired several high quality pots and stones and wanted a stand match.  We are glad that we did.

Hirohisa Shimizu

Each stand wrapped in a nice cloth comes with a kiri-bako to safely store it.  The cloth and box lid are stamped with the artist mark which by the way is different than his mark on the stand.  Over the next couple of posts we will show you his three stands and what we are displaying on them.

Hirohisa Shimizu with a Shishimaru pot.

We purchased this pot from Daisaku Nomoto (野元大作) last summer when he visited Boon.  An interesting design that looks like two pots melding into one. I have only seen one other example of this type of pot in a Japanese bonsai pot book.  A beautiful blue glaze somewhat reminiscent of Tofukuji.

Hirohisa Shimizu (19 x 13.5 x 3.7cm)

The stands are very well made out of what appears to be a single piece of rosewood. In carefully studying this stand I can not see any splices or gluing unless he has done such an excellent job of matching the wood grain that it disappears – which is possible.

The finish on the stands is excellent with numerous layers of finish to bring out a very high sheen. This finish also makes it very difficult to photograph and I was too lazy to grab a gobo to knock down some of the top light.

Hirohisa Shimizu

Beautifully crafted.  The stand is actually very level but when shooting this in our light tent the background paper was not aligned correctly and therefore the rightmost leg is off the ground.

Hirohisa Shimizu

He carves his artist mark directly into the stand and can be seen in the photo above. All the images can be clicked to see a larger version.

When we now buy stands in Japan, before they are shipped, we have a kiri-bako made so that they make a safe transit from Japan to America.  After purchasing an 40 year old stand that left Japan in perfect condition but arrived with two broken legs and cracked top – it just seems cheaper to have a box built to ship the stand in.  On a side note, our friend Jeff informed us of an antique repair shop in San Francisco that does incredible repair work (museum quality) so we had the stand repaired. We have to admit it is almost impossible to see where the stand what damaged.  If you are in need of a repair let me know and we will get you in touch with the shop.

Over the next few days we will post on two other stands by Shimizu. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.