Loving Bonsai

What is bonsai? The craft of shaping miniature trees in a small pot. This art first arose over a thousand years ago in China. This art was originally known as pun-sai.

Even then the variety of individual bonsai was astonishing, as known from ancient drawings. Gnarled, faux-windswept trunks, with sparse leaves to full-flowering miniature blossoming trees dot the historic record.

The Chinese artists often went one step beyond nature and shaped their trees into replicas of real animals and imaginary icons. Native birds, mythical dragons and a host of tiny fauna formed the models for many of these fine sculptures.

As Zen Buddhism spread from China to Japan during the Kamakura period, so too did the art of bonsai. The late 12th century saw the migration of both artists and craft techniques to the small island in the northeast.

While bonsai was already a highly developed skill in China, as it grew in Japan it evolved into the highest of arts. The care and patience required, the complexity in miniature and the creation of a living work of art suited the temperament of the horticultural artists of Japan.

Planted first in the monasteries, the art of bonsai was practiced and refined by the learned scholars and cloistered artists of this rural society. This gentle art, requiring the skill of a jeweler and the patience of a saint, suited the monks well.


Bonsai Waterfall Garden - Single Brown

Developed to a peak during the 18th century, where they were frequently regarded as treasured objects by the nobility, bonsai rapidly became popular beyond the walls of the monastery and the palace.
As Japan grew from an agricultural society to an industrial and trading powerhouse in the 19th century an ironic historical twist occurred. The agricultural art of bonsai spread from the monasteries to the general populace.