Bonsai Inspiration

My inspiration for the bonsai art came this way...

* A tree clings to a rock, its bare roots grasping the boulder, its trunk and branches gnarled by the elements of wind and weather; its age is measured in centuries, its size in inches.


* Long ago the Japanese came to admire the dwarfed trees of their rugged landscape, seeing in them an inspiring battle of life triumphing over hardship. Rescued from mountainside, seashore or bog, potted and tenderly nurtured, these dwarfed trees won an honoured place in the Japanese culture. It has been treated as an object of aesthetic appreciation and philosophic meditation; out of this custom grew the Art of Bonsai.

The art of bonsai has been practiced for many centuries in Japan, and even longer in China. Bonsai, to both Japanese and Chinese, means the same: "a plant in a container'.

Th cultivation of Bonsai is an art in the truest sense, as it requires the subordination and handling of materials, albeit living to an aesthetic end. The difference between it and other arts, such as sculpture and painting, is that in the latter cases a complete work in finite, whereas Bonsai is infinite, and requires control and training throughout its life.

The bonsai art as practiced today dates mainly from the Meiji restoration period way back in 1968. As japan started to trade with the west, the demand for these natural treasures among the affluent class of the west soon exhausted the natural supply of dwarfed trees, causing professional bonsai growers to produce artificially dwarfed trees from seeds and cuttings. Thus the Art of Bonsai Making.

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