Hunting the Stone: Suiseki in the West

MUSIC When we hike in the desert or beside a river, don't we all hunt for interesting rocks and stones?

In Asia, they've been hunting stones for thousands of years, and they've even made it into an art form.

It's called stone appreciation or as the Japanese say, suiseki. Today in the West, stone collectors in North America and Europe have adopted the same Asian standards of connoisseurship, and the practice is getting more popular every year.

So join us as we hunt for stones and learn about Suiseki in the West.

We're going to find something in here.

What about this dark one?

It looks kind of interesting.

With this many rocks theres got to be at least one.

Viewing stones are an art form that originated in China two or three thousand years ago and went through Korea to Japan and is very alive and well around the world today.

It is fascinating I think to most people who do discover it, So what we're describing here really is a treasure hunt for grown ups.

That's exactly what it is.

It's getting out in gorgeous country, having an adventure, maybe camping, maybe just a day trip.

But getting out in nature and not only finding something that becomes valuable because of the esthetics of it, but also finding the part of yourself that can be in nature and can relate to something on the esthetic basis.

This is a stone that was found many, many years ago here on the Kern River by a man Yuzi Sato.

This is just a masterpiece.

We will probably never, ever find one that perfect for the Japanese sensibility.

It's just the right size.

It's embracing.

It has this little inlet.

It has no cracks or chips.

It's super dense.

It's nice and flat on the bottom.

Everything about it is just what we want.

And that's what we're looking for.

And it's why we keep coming back to the current year after year, in the hopes that we'll find something like that.

MUSIC In China they're called Scholars Rocks In Korea, they're called Suseok And in Japan they're called Suiseki.

There are stones that are not particularly landscape scenes then we call those viewing stones.

And we call them viewing stones because here in California we have desert stones which don't come from the rivers.

So Suiseki means water stone so desert stone has to be a different classification.

MUSIC In Japan, since they don't have deserts they hunt for their rocks in rivers.

so that's why it's a water stone.

MUSIC I'm crazy!

That's why.

Some of these trees I've worked on for 30, 40 years.

This is a little hut stone is actually from one panhandle area of Texas.

And what makes it a hut and fairly good one that is that it's got the dome thatched roof with the overhang, which is kind of nice all the way, you know, around the edge there.

And then you have kind of the base.

In this country, the interest in suiseki-style stones was developed by bonsai practitioners.

You have the living tree and then the stone, and they form like a yin and yang type thing.

MUSIC No, it's not really a form of living.

It supplements my hobby.

LAUGH It gives me a reason to go out and spend the kind of time I do looking for stones.

And it makes my wife happy.

LAUGH That I can sell stones and and pay for my trips.

I go long distances to find some of these stones, like to Wyoming and Montana and Washington State, Oregon.

I've live for challenges and I love looking for things.

Do we decided we better have a club, maybe get enough people together that we could have lectures or talks and eventually learn the details of the Japanese art form.

the Aiseki Kai is traditionally been informed by the Japanese tradition and tried to emulate aspects of that.

I'm the co-founder of California Aiseki Kai, and my husband and I founded it.

We have a couple hundred members they are from all over the world.

We've been accepted now by the Japanese as being collectors of proper viewing stones.

And we can find them all in North America.

They're all over this country, we have an incredible richness here.

I think I love collecting stones much more than actually owning them.

once I have them, they don't give me nearly the thrill that finding them does.

Everybody looks for the ultimate stone which of course, is Mount Fuji.

I have not yet found Mount Fuji, but I'll keep looking.

So when you find it, it's like finding a treasure.

MUSIC It's like a mini vacation.

When you're out here for one day somehow it seems as if you've been away from home for a week.

There's no phone, there's no TV, there are no issues.

You're not thinking about your bills, you're not thinking about anything except that next stone.

I love that feeling.

Now, these are stones that inherently don't have any value.

They may be Basalt, they may be Jasper.

They don't have an inherent, gemology In the United States we're willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars for just the right Oriental rug or the beautiful oil painting.

In Japan, not so much.

They'll spend that kind of money on a teacup.

They'll also spend that kind of money on a stone.

In Japan, stones can get into the thousands and thousands of dollars.

In the United States I don't know too many people are interested in paying a lot of money for a stone.

When we collect stones, it's the patina, it's the surface of the stone that's most interesting and its shape as a landform.

Scholars stones are very different.

They're usually a lot more vertical whereas the Japanese stones are usually horizontal.

We're kind of like in the middle.

We like both art forms here in America, like kind of like with all art.

And we go by Japanese esthetics and we go by Chinese esthetics.

I happen to adore small stones and I have some magical ones that are ventifacts that is carved by the wind and the sand.

And they are fantastical shapes.

They may be trees, they may be people, they may be anything.

Pareidolia is the tendency that we all have to see figures, animals, human shapes and things that have nothing whatever to do with it.

And it's an American bison!

I mean, it's just perfect.

Here's his little chin there's his eyes, his back.

He's just wonderful.

And there's his horn?

And there's his horn.

Another very smooth, patinated and it seems to be somewhat green.

It is very green.

It's very quiet.

And where did you find it?

This was in the Eel River in Northern California.

This one here, it's a combination of Jaspers and Quartz.

And in the front here there's like a rose a flower coming up on the front of the stone.

Our relationship with a particular item is very personal, very subjective.

You know, man seems to be a distinguishing animal.

We make up distinctions if even if they aren't there or needn't be there.

but it also is the way we begin to find value and find things that resonate with us.

The stand makes the stone, it presents it, sort of like a picture frame to a picture, but even differently.

It's more of a marriage.

You want the contour of these to fit the stone.

This is called a suiban, and the sand is raked totally smooth so there are no distractions at all so all you focus on is this beautiful stone.

With a suiban, the sand can be used to hold the stone in the correct position.

It can hide an uneven bottom.

And you can also use water with it.

MUSIC Now I don't cut stones so in order to accommodate that we had a daisa made for it to accommodate the fact that I'm not about to take off this bottom bit.

See the undercut?

And here's the thatch and it has this beautiful patina.

It does.

From the desert.

And this is from the Yuha Desert.

I've been informed by the Chinese and the Japanese traditions.

So when I go out into the wild and looking for stones, that sort of the background against which I'm judging, what I want to look at.

If I'm at a river, I might be wading in the river I might be walking along the riverbank.

Hopefully there's a whole batch of stones.

And I'll see something.

I'll pick it up and it may or may not be anything.

Most of the time it isn't.

Most of the time we get there and it's what we call a lever-right. And a lever-right is leave it right there. LAUGH It's not something that you would take home.

Nope.

Lever-right.

Leave it right there.

Oh, heres a good one.

Maybe this is upside-down.

But then occasionally you'll come across a stone and it will intrigue you for whatever reason.

It'll have something that's tremendously appealing.

If it has a good color, if it has a good skin.

If it feels smooth on the outside or maybe in the desert if it's windblown with wind and sand that has carved it so it's got unusual shapes to it.

I was wondering, you know, Gudrun in Germany said that colored rocks were kind of coming in.

Did you just mean tiny rocks?

Well, it's just like a Jasper.

Yeah, it doesn't have the right shape though.

Its got the color, true.

Yeah, but not the right shape.

Yeah, kind of boring.

No, there's always been interest in colorful stones.

MUSIC Well, I got three things here.

One is a crowbar because my wife here and finds these 80 pound rocks that have to be pried out.

And then this is something just to hook them down and you don't have to bend over so much.

And then finally, a little hook like this.

I think that's called a longshoreman hook.

It's a longshoreman hook.

We got these at a hardware store in San Francisco.

It's the only place I've ever seen them.

But it works perfect for, you know, picking over a smaller rock Not so bad.

A little plateau.

It's a nice shape but I'm not sure that the quality is good.

We will wash it off when we get down to the river.

Okay.

Want to put it in my backpack?

Yes.

MUSIC What a person should do is go to the river and walk back.

And that way you don't have to carry them all the way down there, round trip.

MUSIC When you decide you're done, that's when you find something.

Ah.

LAUGH Hey, that does look nice!

Actually, this is a possible keeper.

Its the best one I've seen today put it that way.

This is called desperate.

LAUGH MUSIC These are the stones we found on this trip.

Nina found most of the good ones she always does.

LAUGH That's so not true.

This is our booty for the weekend and this has been all the fun.

Every stone we pick up, we compare it to what we learn from the Japanese categories.

and generally they fit into those one or more of those categories.

MUSIC We have a couple hundred members, but today there are supposed to be between 35 and 40 of us who have come out here to hunt for stones.

Something we do every year.

It's incredible fun.

The best part stone collection is the hunt.

I started coming out to on these hunts with them.

We go about twice a year, mostly to the desert, sometimes to some rivers.

And, it's great fun.

It's good comradeship.

And you never know what you're going to find!

MUSIC Now that we're here at the dessert, waiting for the rest of the club to show up I'll start pulling out some of the gear.

Hey, Jack come on out!

Hey!

MUSIC I came over to this one because the wear from a distance was so nice.

But it's, you can see it's got that flat bottom again, but it's just a clunky stone.

Not quite there.

MUSIC I love the quiet.

I love the outdoors.

I love the excitement of thinking that at any moment you might find a masterpiece.

And that does happen from time to time.

A year ago, here I found the most magnificent hut stone, thatched hut stone.

And it was just a thrill.

MUSIC A Leaverite, meaning leave it right there.

My friends, I think may be a bit jealous.

I mean, we do have a wonderful time out here, and I'm always expressing how much fun it is.

But at the same time, they probably think we're a little nuts.

I think you have to have done it to appreciate how much fun it is.

It can be really exciting when somebody finds something really fabulous.

The samurai would have a little stone that looked like a mountain.

And they'd say, I have the whole world in my hand. Before the song was written.

It's just something incredibly unique about the fact that you find a stone that suggests something else other than just a rock.

We're trying to find little stones, small things, that holds within it a possibility of an entire world or perhaps the stone looks like something, just reminds you of something.

White, in Japan at least is not desired.

And I think that partially there, though may come from the fact that white is a color associated with death.

And so I'm not sure if that has effect, but it might, CAMERA CLICKS and MUSIC MUSIC On that stone that you have, wash it off, then when you go home at night and youre sitting in front of the TV rub it.

Rub it.

Rub it.

See how dark is getting after me rubbing it?

Noah's ark!

You got the eye for these things.

It is, look at that!

Today I found a boat stone and a boat stone looks a little bit like this.

And the idea is that we are out here looking for landscape scenes which are called Suiseki.

But boats and thatched huts are so often seen in the landscape that they're also considered landscape stones.

And that's what this is.

And when I display it, hopefully you'll look at it and say, Gee, that looks like a boat. I have seen lots of people find really, really good hut stones out here.

I have not been one of the lucky ones so far.

Well, good luck.

Well, that's what I'm hunting for so I'm going to go back to hunting.

MUSIC I just joined the club because my mom is part of it LAUGH and it's fun.

Hey this one is good!

Oh!

That's a thatched hut.

Yeah.

It's a perfect example of a thatched hut.

It has the floor, it has the perfect overhang.

It's absolutely brilliant and Judy found it today.

Excellent.

MUSIC Good company!

LAUGH Hey, you're here!

I've been telling everybody by your hutstone.

Thank you.

I have to let everybody see this.

Okay.

LAUGH Look at the roof line how perfect it is.

Yes, symmetrical.

It almost gives you chills.

It does give you chills!

This particular stone I found at the very end of the day.

And it actually looks like two different mountain ranges with like a valley or something going through the center of it.

It's like it's a treasure, is what it is!

It's like finding gold.

Because when you walk up to it, you know, you're the only person that seen this stone for millions and millions of years.

You could walk right by it and it's going to sit there for another million years.

MUSIC Woo Hoo!

Okay!

Alright!

Thank yoiu everybody.

APPLAUSE Its a fun hobby.

Pick up your stones and take them home and clean them up.

Then we get to show them once a year at the Huntington Library.

MUSIC I had seen the show at the Huntington Gallery and Library and that really excited me.

Those rocks are so fantastic.

I had never really known about this art form before.

MUSIC Welcome to the Aiseki Kai's annual exhibit of viewing stones.

We've been doing these museum quality exhibits for 25 years here at the Huntington.

So it's come a long way for us to have the kind of space and prestige that the show has now, today.

MUSIC Our approach is to try to create an overall exhibition that's appealing in its own right, as well as just having a bunch of very, nice stones.

All these stones are from North America.

This one comes from Virginia.

They're really quite fabulous and they're all unique.

This stone has been in almost every book on stones and is quite well known and fortunately Jim Greaves has it now in his collection so we can enjoy it.

Just looking at the stones that were on display it just shows our members are getting this concept that the Japanese teach.

Its very exciting to me after 30 years.

It's been a while, to see people picking up on it.

I've been seduced by stones.

I've just always loved them.

I think I started collecting them when I was a kid.

And it's something that a lot more people are now beginning to find out about.

So it's sort of fun to see it grow.

Just yesterday there was some little kids walking by and I told them, Hey, go look at the stones over there.

They look just like this.

There's better ones than this one over there on the show.

So they went over and walked the show, and they looked at when they walked back out, I said, Hey, how do you like that show over there? So, oh, it was great.

But he says, Well, I think you had the best stone over there. So they make you feel pretty good.

I think the stones themselves are going to begin to tell us what North American collecting is going to be in the future.

We're young.

I mean, America is historically pretty young.

And stone collecting in America is really, really young!

Who knows where it'll go?

I haven't a clue.

I just know that it feels like an enormous privilege to get out in nature and be able to look at things and find something that feels like magic.

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