Sunday, October 9, 2011

Weekend by Hans Van Meer


This weekend is simply best described as an ideal weekend. The Slovenian bonsai club hosted the bonsai master Hans Van Meer from the Netherlands, who made a workshop on Saturday and continued on Sunday with a demonstration.

Hans Van Meer has proved to be a great bonsai master and a remarkable man with great personality. A personality who not only transmits knowledge and experience but creates a great atmosphere, a person who embodies the spirit of  bonsai. 


The energy at the workshop was excellent and to work in such an environment, to work under the guidance of such great master, to work in such good company is simply great. All that is necessary for the description of the workshop is: "This is it." No additional words are necessary.


Hans Van Meer








At the workshop I worked on a tree that was rather dificult to style for me, but  after some discusion with Hans Van Meer, his supervision of my work and help of Thomaž Kovšca the  transformation ended very promising. Absolutely a step forward, now some rest is needed and then we go ahead.


Juniperus - Before styling

Juniperus - After syling

The second day, Hans Van Meer made a demo on an interesting tree. The main goal was to make a start design for a long-term development strategy. It was not a classic demonstration where the primary goal is the show and  the best possible end result of the firsty styling.


It was a demonstration where it was shown how Hans Van Meer works at home on his trees. Niks Pine (Pinus mugo) underwent a transformation that quite clearly shows the final image, but it also allows enough freedom for Nik to complete all the details in the next stages of development and makes a good base for the next steps to the final design. If I learned something in those years it is, that this way of work is time-consuming, requires more patience, but it always pays off. One more time: "This is it."


Niks Pine (Pinus Mugo) before the demo




The perfect weekend ended with a visit from Tomaž Kovšca, Tomaž Hafner and Hans Van Meer, who took a look at the trees in my garden and made some comments. After a nice chat the perfect weekedn unfortunatly came to the end but the feeling is great, new experience with lots of energy is here and all i need to say: "This is it".

Hans Van Meer and my Spruce (Abies Picea)

Someone is very happy :)

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