For all of us in the small world of suiseki, we lost our good friend Suzuki Koji today. To his family, close friends and many admirers our best wishes go out to all of you.  He will be missed.

We want to take a moment and share our fondest memories of him.

If you have participated in suiseki anywhere in the world you might know his name but most likely you have seen his ubiquitous artist mark found upon hundreds, if not thousands, of daizas.

We still recall turning over a few nice stones to find this mark. At the time, we had no idea who made this daiza but we wanted to know because the workmanship was beautifully done.

We began to do some research and we found a short bio on Koji Suzuki in the book Suiseki-II An Art Created by Nature: The Sen-En-Kyo Collection of Japanese Viewing…

One of the first things we noticed when obtaining an older, high-quality pot or stone is that it often comes stored in a wooden box.  Known as a kiri-bako, these lightweight but very strong boxes keep things safe and allow for your collection to be stacked when storing them away.

Ueno Green Club

There are several people in the US that makes these boxes and the wood can be purchased in the US to make your own.  Often when acquiring a pot or stand in Japan, we have kiri-bako made so that the shipment has a better chance of arriving intact.  After shipping several stands to see them broken or destroyed the investment in the kiri-bako became more of a necessity than a luxury.

In our search, we discovered a kiri-bako maker in Osaka, Japan.  Soichiro Kobayashi is a third-generation maker of kiri-bako. On his web site he refers to…

Click the photo to download the catalog.

For the last 20 years, KJ and I have been collecting excellent bonsai pots from Japan and China.  However, the last 7 years we have been concentrating on building our viewing stone collection.  We therefore we have made the decision to sell the majority of our Japanese and Chinese collector bonsai pots.

Our collection contains Yusen, Tofukuji, Isseki, and Kouzan pots from Japan, several very old Chinese antique pots and others.  Most are show/collector quality pots, with a few exceptions.

If you have interest in any of these pots and would like more information or photos, please contact us at the email address listed on the catalog and we will get back with you as quickly as we can.

Thank you for your consideration.

Our best,

Sam and KJ

Carlo Scafuri è un nome ben noto nell’ambito dell’arte bonsaistica sia per la sua bravura sia per la passione e l’animo che vi mette.
Come sa, chi mi conosce o legge queste mie righe, da sempre ho collaborato volentieri con le associazioni bonsaistiche e, come ikebanista, credo di essere stato il primo che ha cercato di abbattere quegli steccati che esistevano tra queste tipologie di arti. Questo perché, pur presentando forme e tecniche differenti, i concetti alla base si rincorrono, viaggiano paralleli, si intrecciano.
Carlo che ho avuto il piacere di incontrarlo più volte, di ammirare il suo operato (anche in veste di fotografo sa catturare il mondo con sguardo particolare) e che non finirò mai di ringraziarlo abbastanza per l’appoggio che ha sempre dato al mondo dell’ikebana e alla mia persona, oggi ha scritto su Facebook un suo pensiero inerente l’arte del Bonsai.
Leggendolo, ancora una volta se ce…