Taikan-ten 2011

Taikan-ten 2011

Sorry I haven’t posted in awhile.  It’s been very busy lately because of the show season.  Luckily, the busy season doesn’t last forever so here is a brand new post about Taikan-ten.  In this post, I will talk a bit about the show, the judging process and some of the things I did during the set up.  The nice thing about being apart of the setup crew is that I got to see the behind the scenes of how the show came together.  I was also fortunate to meet other apprentices from other nurseries.

Prepping for show

Instead of going into the show prep, Jonas from Bonsai Tonight wrote a great post about prepping for Taikan-ten.  Visit here to see what went on for show preparations.

Judging

Once we got to the hall and set up the show, the judging for the trees began.  There was a group of about 10 or so judges that walked from tree to tree.  There was two rounds of judging to finally pick the winners.  From what I could tell, there was multiple categories ranging from tree sizes, types and styles.  There was even awards for suiseki.  Once the preliminary around was over, all the selected trees were places on long rows of tables.  Trees for different prize categories were placed together, then they were judged.

The judging lasted for several hours so let see what else was going on during the judging.

Back to the judging

I’m not going to talk too much into which trees won which prize  because a book isproduced for this show every year and I don’t want to take away from that.  Also, the following pictures are only some of the trees and stones at Taikan-ten.  Enjoy!