Suiseki

Suiseki - a piece of rock placed in a shallow bonsai dish filled with sand. The appreciation of Suiseki is very similar to the appreciation of classical music. Just as a Beethoven symphony is not to everyone's taste, so too Suiseki tends to appeal to a limited audience. To appreciate Suiseki one must acquire a taste for it.

Origins of Suiseki

Since ancient times, the Chinese have admired beautiful rocks. Rocks symbolized mountains, and for the Chinese, mountains were the embodiment of virtually every mystical and aesthetic experience imaginable. The Chinese used rocks extensively in their landscape gardens to represent mountains. The Chinese expression for landscape, whether in the context of painting or gardening, is San Sui, which means "mountain and water". The rocks in their compositions were known as San Sui-sek, or "stones used for landscape". Over the centuries, the full expression San-Sui-Sek has become abbreviated to Sui-Sek or "water stone".

Rocks of all sizes and shapes, both large and small, were collected, either for their intrinsic beauty, or simply because it was the fashion. It was out of this obsession that the true tradition of Suiseki emerged.

The appreciation of rocks for their intrinsic beauty only reached Japan about five or six hundred years ago, and yet, as with most Oriental arts copied from the Chinese, the Japanese soon excelled at it. Whereas the Chinese used rocks mainly to symbolize mountains, the Japanese have developed a more imaginative approach. Over the years, they have learned to interpret beautiful stones in many different ways, such as islands, tortoises, waterfalls and bridges.

More recently, the Japanese have introduced a new type of viewing stone, known as the "chrysanthemum stone" or Kikka-seki. These are large, very smooth rocks, with beautiful chrysanthemum patterns embedded in them. Such stones are greatly admired, and highly prized.

Choosing stones

The true viewing stone is almost abstract in its quality; the viewer has to use his, or her, imagination to interpret and absorb its full significance. The Chinese, on the other hand, are less subtle in their approach: their rocks closely resemble the shapes and textures of mountains seen in nature.

The Chinese make extensive use of slates, which represent the mountains of central and western China. These mountain stones can range from a few centimeters to one or two meters (3-6ft) in height, and they come in a variety of colors -pink, gray or white. In order to make the best use of local material for Suiseki, select rocks that most closely resemble those used by the Chinese and Japanese.

Many rocks offer tremendous scope for use as viewing stones, but are discarded because they are considered to be either too bulky or too unstable for display. There are two ways of overcoming these drawbacks. The first is to fix the rook in the desired position with cement or synthetic glue. Epoxy resin, or car filler paste (a type of fiberglass resin) are excellent for this purpose, as is quick-setting cement. Alternatively, large pieces of rock can be set in a bed of concrete, which can then be fitted into a bonsai pot.

If the second method does not appeal to you, then you might consider creating a flat base with a grinding wheel or a cutting disk. Slate and sandstone are fairly easy materials to shape with a cutting disk, but for harder rocks, such as granite or marble, you may need to use diamond cutting tools.

Displaying Suiseki

There are two methods of displaying Suiskei: in shallow bonsai dishes filled with either sand, gravel, or even water; or on a stand, which has been specially carved to fit the shape of the stone. As with bonsai, you will need to establish the best viewing side for each piece of rock, so that it can be displayed to its best advantage.

The simplest way of displaying viewing stones is to place them in a shallow bonsai tray filled with sand or gravel. If you can find a shallow tray without drainage holes (known as sui-ban or "water basin") this can be filled with water. If you are good at carving wood, or you know a woodcarver, then you might consider making an individual stand, which will enhance the rock, giving it an added elegance.

Although large viewing stones are best displayed on their own, Suiseki will complement large specimen bonsai in much the same way that accent plantings are used to contrast with specimen trees.