Kusamono pottery making workshop March 8, March 14 (Young Choe Kusamono workshop to follow April 4-5), Portland Oregon

[Sansokuu]

Link to sign up

Come to Portland Oregon and make kusamono pots with us! No pottery experience needed. Over a three hour guided workshop, we will provide clay and tools and instruction on making three unique pots for kusamono/shitakusa (accent plant/understory planting paired with bonsai).

3 hour workshop session times:
Sunday: March 8, 9 am-12 pm
Sunday: March 8, 1-4 pm
Saturday: March 14, 9 am-12pm
Saturday: March 14, 1 pm-4pm


Open to the public, no need to be a Bonsai Society of Portland member to participate.

After the workshop we will fire and glaze the pots. Young Choe will be holding kusamono workshops the weekend of April 4-5 for a separate fee from the pottery workshops (these are bsop sponsored workshops and will require membership to participate). You are highly encouraged to bring your pots to create kusamono of your own with Young Choe! Soil and plants will be provided. I’ll post the link to sign up for Young’s class once BSOP gets it up online

Link to sign up

 

[Sansokuu]

Bumping post - one of the pot designs is based on a traditional roof tile. These originated in China but you can see iterations as different countries incorporated it into their own architectural designs. This is a Japanese example, with family crests on the end of the tile.
Participants can carve their own designs or we can emboss some neat motifs.


Oakleaf kamon featured on the above tiles:

“Kashiwa (Oak) is a tree in the beech family, and its leaves are traditionally used to wrap kashiwa-mochi, a sweet eaten during Tango no Sekku (Boys’ Festival). These thick leaves were historically used as plates for offering food at Shinto shrines. Because the oak tree was considered sacred, the Kashiwa-mon was often adopted as a family crest by priestly households.”

For those wondering, Nao’s family crest is oak leaves with vine tendrils.

In use as a kusamono pot.

 

[Sansokuu]

Bumping post! Sunday morning March 8 is almost sold out! Also, these pot designs are different from the 2024 Kakuzan workshop if anyone was wondering. The pot you’ll be making under my direction is carved out of a solid piece of clay that will be dusted with wood ash and single fired. I’m not promising any crabs, just potential.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

Oh my goodness - if we lived closer my whole family would be doing this.

 

[Ruddigger]

Oh my goodness - if we lived closer my whole family would be doing this.

Me too! But then again if I lived closer I’d just be signing my paychecks over to Nao and Mary. So much good stuff.

 

[Sansokuu]

Me too! But then again if I lived closer I’d just be signing my paychecks over to Nao and Mary. So much good stuff.

We’d just give you stuff for all the help you and Liz have given us