Smoke,
Wm Valavanis stayed in my house back in the early 1980's when the Atlanta Bonsai Society had him come in to do workshops. I think he had published two or three years of International Bonsai at the time. Incidentally, he too had studied in Japan.
His publishing translations of articles in Japanese bonsai magazines was a revelation for those of us not fortunate enough to live in California.
I also remember looking at some magazines titled Golden Moments or Bonsai in California. I picked them up, thumbed thru them and put them back down. Generally, they were pictures of California Junipers. We don't have trees like that here in Georgia, so they didn't interest me.
The Internet has been a great source of information about bonsai. So have the people who have returned from serving as apprentices in Japan. The information available now far exceeds the information we had back when John Naka was teaching. John would come to Atlanta once a year for workshops. I wish I had the opportunity to visit his back yard.
Things have changed since then, Smoke. Maybe you were fortunate to know all about akadama, pumice, and lava since the '70s, but I can tell you I didn't know about in the 80s. I remember the day David Cook excitedly told me about Turface and how it was the secret ingredient we had been missing! My mix then was turface, granite grit, and pine bark. We thought we were cutting edge! I use none of those materials today.
Look, someone asked Hagedorn what's changed in the past 30 years. Evidently, for you, nothing has since you've known it all since then. But that's not been the case for everyone. I suspect things will continue to change, and thirty years from now, someone will asking the Masters the same question: What's changed in Bonsai since 2015? I bet there will be plenty
Wm Valavanis stayed in my house back in the early 1980's when the Atlanta Bonsai Society had him come in to do workshops. I think he had published two or three years of International Bonsai at the time. Incidentally, he too had studied in Japan.
His publishing translations of articles in Japanese bonsai magazines was a revelation for those of us not fortunate enough to live in California.
I also remember looking at some magazines titled Golden Moments or Bonsai in California. I picked them up, thumbed thru them and put them back down. Generally, they were pictures of California Junipers. We don't have trees like that here in Georgia, so they didn't interest me.
The Internet has been a great source of information about bonsai. So have the people who have returned from serving as apprentices in Japan. The information available now far exceeds the information we had back when John Naka was teaching. John would come to Atlanta once a year for workshops. I wish I had the opportunity to visit his back yard.
Things have changed since then, Smoke. Maybe you were fortunate to know all about akadama, pumice, and lava since the '70s, but I can tell you I didn't know about in the 80s. I remember the day David Cook excitedly told me about Turface and how it was the secret ingredient we had been missing! My mix then was turface, granite grit, and pine bark. We thought we were cutting edge! I use none of those materials today.
Look, someone asked Hagedorn what's changed in the past 30 years. Evidently, for you, nothing has since you've known it all since then. But that's not been the case for everyone. I suspect things will continue to change, and thirty years from now, someone will asking the Masters the same question: What's changed in Bonsai since 2015? I bet there will be plenty
