Bontei
Tray Gardens
盆庭
Bontei means tray garden in Japanese. There are many traditions in East Asia of presenting stones and plants on trays or in ceramic pots such as bonsai (tray-plantings) and suiseki (water-stones).
All of these traditions express the beauty and rhythms of nature in highly abstracted form, capturing the sense of reflection one feels in wild nature in the space of a tray. My bontei begin within that tradition but broaden the scope to include new materials and philosophies.