Reishi Bonsai Bowls — Living Art

The Process

Shaped by light and CO₂, not by hands

Reishi grows toward light and reacts to carbon dioxide the way a bonsai reacts to wire. By adjusting both inside the grow tent, each piece gets coaxed — never forced — into a form. It takes weeks. Some pieces take months. Every bowl is a collaboration between TO and the Reishi itself: the mushroom holds half the authorship, which is why no forgery is possible and no two can ever be alike.

It took two and a half years and about 100 pieces to learn what the mushroom would and wouldn't do. Those 100 pieces are this collection.

Why They're Sold

Art that pours its money into a building

Every sale funds the buildout of The Living Workshop — the tents, the tools, the land fund, the documentation. When you own one of these, you hold physical proof of the loop: wood became sawdust, sawdust became mushroom, and the sale of that union built a place where nothing gets wasted.

To purchase, write to thelivingworkshop@proton.me — or buy the current living piece, the MycoVase ($250), and watch it finish growing on the homepage timelapse.

The Origin · Written by TO at the Start, 2023

Why 100 bowls?

Before the first bowl, there was a question written down on a shop computer. The purpose of the project was two-fold.

First

Redesign the legacy systems

Find out what happens when we begin to look at our legacy systems and attempt to redesign them to better emulate the planet's natural systems. Not just aiming permaculture at gardening — aiming it at the woodshop, the workbench, the waste stream.

Second

Commit to the process, 100 times

What happens if one simply commits to doing the same process 100 times — even without all the right tools, skills, or knowledge at the start? What will be learned? How will you, as the creative, change in unique, interesting, and unanticipated ways?

One log, three systems, ten yields

THE CHAIN, AS WRITTEN IN 2023
input(hardwood log) → output(wooden bowl + sawdust)
input(sawdust) → output(mushroom)
input(spent block) → output(compost)

Wooden bowl (art) Reishi fruiting bodies (living art) Reishi powder & tincture Lion's Mane, fresh & tinctured Red wiggler worms Chicken eggs Compost

And after it's complete?

The last question in the origin document: can you find a way to orient all this to benefit not only yourself but the wider community? The answer became The Living Workshop — build the first MycoMakerSpace combining all three systems, then open-source the plans so communities can build their own.

Imagine a MycoMakerSpace everywhere there is a publicly-funded library: learn a skill, build anything you can imagine, grow food that is nutritional as well as medicinal, minimize food waste, and build much-needed healthy soil — while sharing tools and building trust in your community.