Bonsai history project

[rockm]

Also, FWIW, all of the trees at the Bonsai and Penjing Museum, particularly the Japanese collection, have undergone sometimes dramatic stylistic changes since they arrived in 1976, mostly as a result of changing tastes, availability of appropriate materials (including proper soils) and maturing experience. I've been going up there since the late 1980's and have seen those changes. The Yamaki pine has been changed using modern tools and materials.

Here's a photo of it the year it arrived in 1976, taken from an album published at the bicentennial...

 

[Lollybonsai]

They weren't called yamadori 300 years ago. They were simply interesting trees gathered in the mountains that had an inherent 'something' that spoke to the person who dug them up.

I live 30 minutes south of the Museum myself. I didn't say the tree is inferior, doesn't look as good, etc. You've mistaken my meaning. What I said is it is alot DIFFERENT than more modern bonsai if you look. It is a chunk of a trunk with pretty straight branching, without the visual 'movement' in more modern trunks and branches on bonsai pines...

Oh! looks like we are pretty close together! sorry about the misunderstanding! I never meant to say that it was inferior, just a lot different that modern trees.

 

[Lollybonsai]

Also, FWIW, all of the trees at the Bonsai and Penjing Museum, particularly the Japanese collection, have undergone sometimes dramatic stylistic changes since they arrived in 1976, mostly as a result of changing tastes, availability of appropriate materials (including proper soils) and maturing experience. I've been going up there since the late 1980's and have seen those changes. The Yamaki pine has been changed using modern tools and materials.

Here's a photo of it the year it arrived in 1976, taken from an album published at the bicentennial...

So neat! The trunk is a lot thinner than it is now!