I was given 20 minutes at our last suiseki club meeting to give a presentation.   My first thought was to give somewhat of a historical overview of stone collecting that started in China and progressed to Japan and then to the US.  However, there was a subject that was to me perhaps more important to discuss and that was the Japanese aesthetic and how it influences the Japanese view of suiseki and other art forms as well.

Often in the US I hear people talk about how the Japanese “see” suiseki.  That always puzzled me since often what I heard from collectors in Japan differed greatly from what I heard Americans convey about their view.  This set me on a quest to try and understand how do the Japanese people really see suiseki or any art for that matter. It lead to a few weeks of research in regards to…

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…