I am very gratefully and appreciative for your support elsewhere but if you are going to quote me then please quote the whole passage. " Until people have a vested interest (time or money) then there will be a lack of improvement as there is no pressure to maintain or improve".
Copious amounts of money might have been a wrong reference used in this particular case. The passage I was referring to was:
The inexpensive nature of the trees leads to a lasseiz-faire attitude, they are forgotten about and if they die the common response is ?well it was cheap anyway?.
Your interpretation of my words make me out to be a money obsessed salesman of collected material which could not be further from the truth. I despise what I see happening across the mountains of Europe with every Tom, Dick and Harry raping the countryside collecting every possible tree with the idea that they will be able to sell it for a massive profit. They might do but it is not a sustainable economy, when many of these collected trees die in the future, the owners will quit in a fit of wasted money, time and effort.
.. and that is not the intent I was trying to convey to the audience this side of the pond. There seems to be a consensus that we need to arrive at the destination yesterday, and the only way to achieve this is through pre-bonsai stock or collected material, which in turn are indeed expensive.
It is true one can find decent material (albeit rare) at any given nursery, I believe as was pointed out it is more important to teach patience and plant selection over source. The enthusiast will come to grasps once he becomes serious of differentiating the two. But until that learning curve in his apprenticeship is mastered, the resulting lack of applied knowledge will be far more drastic on an expensive piece of material than one that was acquired elsewhere.
The issue I have issues with is: "If you are serious about bonsai" that is often brought up through the course of many discussions. I am serious about bonsai. I am not extravagant with bonsai nor do I have the intention of being exuberant about bonsai, bonsai is more than that. So when someone (not every one) this side of the pond, ridicules those who are less fortunate then others, then I believe these folks are not in bonsai for the right reasons as previously explained.
I understand what Walter was trying to impart to his audience, but as mentioned, folks will need to get and feel a bloody nose, before they can progress.
The price of a tree often bears no relation to the quality, more often than not it is directly related to the ability of the buyer to recognize quality or not. I always tell my students, buy with your eyes, not with your ears.
... and this was discussed at length from the ensuing discussion of the original review.
My comments with respect to nursery material were not an absolute condemnation of such material and I was amazed to see the discussion that was sparked off by the comment. Good quality trees can be made from nursery material. Better quality trees can be made from bonsai nursery material, even better quality trees can be made from collected material. Amazing trees can be made from a seed. However every type of material has its limitations and they must be worked around. There is no perfect material.
... no argument there, if time is a factor, then there indeed are shortcuts.
Please do not misinterpret my comments as some kind of command to spend money. To do Bonsai you need either time or money. The creation of Bonsai takes a long time, you either put that time in yourself or you pay for somebody elses time, exactly in the same way you would pay a mechanic to work on your car. This is where Bonsai all gets a bit Marxist and we are going off into a completely different discussion. I am all in favour of cheaper trees for all.
... once again no argument there. One should be practicing the art in a fashion that is comfortable to him/her and within his/her means, the rest is irrelevant.
With all due respect your opinions on my apprenticeship are based upon many of the myths that surround Japanese Bonsai which are perpetuated by many who seek to believe in them. I am not one of them, I seek to dispel the myths and take that which is good from the East and combine it with the best of the West. Please do not take this as a personal attack, I am genuinely grateful for all your comments and if you wish to continue this discussion further then please contact me directly.
... and the latter was pointed out in your interview. I do not believe the type of apprenticeship imposed by the Japanese (in many instances) be conducive to good learning. You were priviledge to work on world class trees, but correct me if I am wrong, not until you proved you were capable of doing so. Perhaps working on these trees precluded the laissez-faire attitude in your case, but I don't believe that the laissez-faire attitude is as wide spread as you would make it to be neither. I believe the lack of any kind of personal discipline leads to nonchalance, regardless of the venue.
I hope this clarified my intentions.
Edit: When a presumption was made wrt your particular apprenticeship, it was based on journal entries that Matt Ouwinga provided us some time ago, of his experiences as an apprentice in Japan.
