Senkeiban Zushiki: naniwa shomeika shuzu ; Kyoto; 1808.

[Mitchell]

Furthering my quest to spend countless hours of time, to recoup moments in the history of our pursuit ( viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8129&p=90543&hilit= ... hes#p90543)

I give you Senkeiban Zushiki: naniwa shomeika shuzu enhanced and for all to see.

It is a book put together to commemorate, the bonsai artisit Sumie Michihiro (Buzen).

The only time I and most of you could have seen these images before would be in reproductions. Phoenix bonsai.com has a few choice images from it, but after some googling (with limited results) I tried navigating Japanese sites and came upon it.
These images were located via a Japanese Museum archive in PDF.

The PDF was low image quality, 6mb for the whole document, I would have preferred 6mb per page, but you work with what you got.
I took the document and ran some basic Photoshop touch up options, to see what the images had in them.
First thing I noticed, which was a fluke is that the museum did not use correct white balance and/or it was not corrected. I wasn't even going to bother seeing, as it should have been right to give any real impressions of the colours in the document.
Secondarily I sharpened the images.
That's it, didn't touch saturation/contrast or anything else, thought them better just restored, not altered.

As we know, Bonsai is a Japanese art which evolved from tray landscapes, this document depicts a significant time in the progression of our art to what it is now. It is interesting the heavy influence of Penjing but the pots they are in now, as well as other aspects of composition.




Enjoy.

Edit- Sorry Steven I owe you another 5 bucks for bandwidth.

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[cre8ivbonsai]

Awesome thanks Mitchell at more than 200 years old, these are beautiful originals, in very good condition, very nice.

if only you could get the Hi-Res

[lindsay farr]

very interesting. Thanks.

[Jamie]

awesome Mitch

I love these old books, the drawings are awesome, I would love to get some prints of these to hang up on my walls at home

[Mitchell]

Thanks guys, good to see it interests others too.

This is the first book of two, I have the other downloaded just need to process it.

Here's an example of what I am doing. I understand the original is pleasing to the eye and not as harsh as the processed. This is because the white balance was out, then they incorrectly adjusted contrast to suit. This now leaves us with processed images that are really in your face and that have now in fact lost some detail, yet gained it in other areas. The contrast now needs to be turned back a tad.
I am not all that happy with how they turned out and would like to have a go fixing them more, but you get to a point where you are actually adjusting the image how you think it should look not how it was originally. This is why I chose not to continue and leave them as they are now.

[Jamie]

it seems you are losing some colour with the adjustment to mate. but the clarity is better too.

[Mitchell]

Not sure I follow on the colour aspect you mentioned, original colours are washed out whereas processed is much more vivid.
On the technical side of things, colours have not been touched just corrected which in my opinion brings out the colour 5x the original, so i'm a bit lost.

Some times if a shot in not correctly white balanced it can look great, but in reality that is not truley what is photographed just the cameras opinion of it given lighting. So if the original appears to have more colour, then this is a fallacy as my versions are closer to the truth. I am not defending any processing skills as none where used, they were auto white balanced correctly via software.

Perhaps your meaning, some colours have darkend making some of the dark greens some appear black, appearing like they are losing colour, where-as it has just gotten darker.?

[Jamie]

yea mate, didnt make myself to clear sorry!

when I say about the colour the original seems to have more green in it compared to the "corrected" on which is actually just some what darker causing the green to not look so green. I wasnt saying you were doing anything wrong with it mate! what you have done does make it clearer. I might have a little play with the original and see if I can show what I am saying

keep up the good work!

where are you finding these sorts of images? I wouldnt mind finding a larger one that could be printed out for wall hangings

or I might have to try and get a canvas and have a crack at it myself, I do love the literati style pictures

[GavinG]

Worth gold. Or at least a couple of Coopers when you're next in Canberra.

Now Kyushu - any chance of a translation? (I'm not asking for much, am I?)

Many thanks for your efforts. If the scan's not detailed, then you can only do so much - we do get a clear idea of what they put together, and how they liked it to look. Lots of elements, different shapes, scenery to move your mind around, but not all that much trimming and pinching.

Gavin

[Mitchell]

Yeah, I typed the first bit, then remembered I noted the green darkening.
It's quite easy to pull back, turning the contrast down will help, but then you need to choose where to stop.

The site these were sourced form is in Japanese, you will find google excludes most non-english sites. If you go to Google japan and search you'll find some. If you go to Pheonix bonsai.com, go to books. There will be by date listings of scrolls/books on bonsai early tree arts.

If you take the names of the books then search google japan, you'll get some results, search those and you should find some old stuff.
Not much english websites with earlier good copies of text.
I'll try and find the museum archive again I got these from.

[Mitchell]

Thanks Gavin!
With the interest it spurs me to do the other volume now, some more great images in it too.

[Robert J. Baran]

Mitchell,

Thank-you for posting additional pages to the little bit we have at http://www.phoenixbonsai.com/Books/18001849.html , first note. We will be linking back to your post in a couple of days.

We are always interested in hearing of the location of other books or more details and illustrations for what we have. Please see http://www.phoenixbonsai.com/Books/Books.html for links to the rest of our grand listing of books on bonsai and related arts.

Robert J. Baran
Bonsai Researcher and Historian

[LLK]

Many thanks, Mitchell, for a fabulous piece of research work!
... and to Robert Baran for his tireless compilation of the history of bonsai.
I can never get enough of the images and explanations.

Lisa

[Mitchell]

Mitchell,

Thank-you for posting additional pages to the little bit we have at http://www.phoenixbonsai.com/Books/18001849.html , first note. We will be linking back to your post in a couple of days.

We are always interested in hearing of the location of other books or more details and illustrations for what we have. Please see http://www.phoenixbonsai.com/Books/Books.html for links to the rest of our grand listing of books on bonsai and related arts.

Robert J. Baran
Bonsai Researcher and Historian

Woah! My apologies, I didn't realise we have people here involved with the site also. Initally this started because I wanted to show some older shots, but didn't know if you had rights over the images hosted on your site, so I endeavoured to find them on a non-licensed source.
http://www.phoenixbonsai.com/Books/Books.html is a excellent resource which I am sure took many years to put together, anyone interested would be well invested to read the material there.

Thank you for your comment and linking here Robert, coming from someone as notable as yourself, I am very humbled indeed.

Edit- By the way, who dobbed me in? I assume you didn't find this page via browsing AB.com .

[MattA]

Hey Mitchell,

Thanks for posting these images, it shows how far bonsai has evolved from its origins in such a short time, like all arts, the modern bears almost no similarity beyond the medium.

Matt