Miniature Bonsai Tree Art by Takanori Aiba

Having worked with and designed bonsai through the years, it was a great discovery for me when I came upon the miniature tree bonsai work of Takanori Aiba, along with his other miniature designs.

Aiba, in a number of his works, creates using bonsai trees as the prop used as the foundation for his highly detailed art sculptures. In this article we'll look at those specific designs, although he works in miniature outside of bonsai as well.

Working in the past, most recently as an architect, and further back as a labyrinth or maze illustrator for POPYE, a fashion magazine based in Japan, Aiba eventually made the decision to combine the two disciplines, which resulted in this amazing miniatures you see below.

As for the bonsai sculptures, it's difficult to categorize them because they're so unique, and appear to be more of a tree city or community than a single dwelling place built in the heights of a forest.

Either way, they are stunning in their detail an intricacy, and I wish I had a couple to enjoy in my house.

I was so taken by Aiba's art because of not only the bonsai trees, but also my love of miniatures and extraordinarily detailed creations which are usually a real work of love, as the amount of time invested in them requires not only discipline and skill, but just as importantly, a passion for your medium and subject matter.

The evidence of that passion and talent is displayed below in these amazing little bonsai tree cities.

This first bonsai sculpture from Takanori Aiba has a sense of humor attached to it, as it's called "Hawaiian Pineapple Club."

The detail, as with all of Aiba's works is amazing, and you think you're going to encounter wood elves from the Lord of the Rings, or Wookies or Ewoks from Star Wars when you look at this and the following art works of Aiba.

For your convenience, you can click on each of the images in this series to get a closer look at the detail of the art.

In the next bonsai tree art we have a similar theme, in that it includes the pointy building tops as in the sculpture above. Including the banners or flags, you get the feel of looking at a scene from medieval times.

The balance of this tree sculpture is fantastic, as the winding bonsai is offset by the majestic building sitting to the left of the tree.

Below the first picture is the same work set in different light and without the cover surrounding and over it.

Here we have a city in a setting including windmills. This is extraordinarily detailed, with all sorts of mazes or labyrinths being part of this surreal but wonderful city. The more narrow look of the city gives the appearance of enormous height. Great piece.

In this final work, Aiba does a masterful job of hiding this little city in the foliage it's built around. There is the dark underneath of the city built around the base, rising up and being merged within the limbs of the tree. This is a very difficult thing to do, especially when using living things as part of your art form.

It was very tempting to include many more of the miniature works of Takanori Aiba, but my personal passion is bonsai combined with the miniatures, so I kept it in that genre. If you want to see more of his work, go to his website and see the variety of miniature sculptures he has created; which include many more where bonsai isn't part of the them.