Review of the Cape Region’s Young Designers’ Competition 2006
by Carl Morrow
The Cape leg of the Young Designers’ competition was held and Saturday 15 April 2006 at Óyama Bonsai Kai’s exhibition at Kirstenbosch.
There were six entrants from four clubs and they were given about three and a half hours to design a juniper that was randomly assigned to them. It was a fun event with plenty of chatting and interaction among the participants and it also generated interest among the people visiting the exhibition. The competitors took their task seriously and it was wonderful to see a group of people really working at their trees to make them look as good as possible in the short time that was available to them.
Judging was a very difficult process with us assessing the overall quality of the design (wow factor), the use of the material and quality of workmanship in pruning and wiring the tree along with attention to detail in the finishing off of the tree. Consideration of the health of the tree was also an important criterion. The judges agreed that this is a very difficult thing to assess, especially when raffia is used, which hides broken branches. Ideally we would need to see the trees in one or two years time to fully assess the success or otherwise of the initial work. I think that this is the major failing of this competition is it does encourage instant results and it would be more interesting to see how these early results mature and change as the tree develops.
The transformation of the material supplied was remarkable and the results show that we have a bright future in bonsai within our newer club members. There were three clearly out standing trees and after some discussion it was agreed that the following places be awarded:
First: Charles Russell
Second: Conrad Botes
Third: Freddie Bisschoff
Thanks to Andre De Kock (Boland Bonsai Kai), Charles Russell (Boland Bonsai Kai), Freddie Bisschoff (Tygerberg Bonsai Club), Marius Boshoff (Cape Bonsai Kai), Conrad Botes (Óyama Bonsai Kai) and Wayne Press (Óyama Bonsai Kai) for participating in the afternoon and making it the success that it was.