9x8x3 Inch Bushuan Rectangle Bonsai Pot #719 – Foo-Dog, Oribe Green, Double Chop & Nail Signed

Before clay there was speed. Bushuan spent over a decade as a top contender in Japanese auto racing, is credited with more than sixty wins, and went on to own the circuit he raced on. He took up bonsai in his twenties, began collecting antique Chinese and Japanese ceramics, and by the mid-1980s had taught himself to throw and glaze by studying the pots he already owned rather than apprenticing under anyone. The racing shows in the work: the same appetite for the edge, in a different medium.

This one is an oribe green drip over a carved shishi, the guardian lion of temple gates, with cloud feet and a rim that extends past the body. It carries a double chop and a nail signature, plus a foo-dog chop on the base answering the carving on the side. The drip is layered coat on coat and fired to run, and on his better pieces it breaks evenly on every side rather than flooding one.

At 9 by 8 inches and 3 inches deep this is medium scale, larger than the shohin and mame work he is best known for. Three inches is shallow for that footprint, which suits a tree with an established root system rather than one still building mass. An oribe green is conventionally paired with deciduous or flowering material, where the colour has foliage to answer.