Bonsai without artistry is evident in (all?) commercial bonsai. I myself believe the technical aspect here is undervalued and is worthy of respect in itself.

Bonsaiists scoff at the chinese import chinese elms and such like, but they are designed to appeal to the western view of what a bonsai should look like, so in effect we must blame ourselves for the poodle pads and s bends. they have been trained over several seasons using wire and stakes, chopped, grown on and trimmed to acheive a dense foliage mass, potted into ceramic pots and transported half way around the world in temperature controlled containers and then leafed out in heated greenhouses (at least here in the u.k.). All this for the price of a pack of fags upwards? This for me is craft to admire.

In this picture this is a previous TOD tree that was imported from korea to the U.K. in the spring of 2005 and quarantined until mid june, it arrive in a mica container and had a vigourous root system planted in a good inorganic soil of granite grit and akadama. Again this tree (and thousands more just like it)has been made to a formula to appeal to the western ideal of what a bonsai should be. To be commercially viable it has to! What impresses me is the care and craft that has gone into this tree, look at the trunk movement, of course contrived. There are no wire marks, the branches are well ramified and the foliage well pinched, even the bark was brushed. Again it was transported half way around the world this time for around the cost of a bouquet of flowers.

The third example here is imported from japan and again impressed me with the level of craft per pound, I,ve been growing acer palmatums for more than a decade that look stupid next to this one but yet I can,t see anything that could be called art in it but this does not diminish the skill I can see in the way the trunk has been built. Now has this tree been designed to the western formulae? I imagine so, the pine like horizontal branches are maybe a clue or maybe easier to design and train in mass production in this fashion. This tree was available for around the price of a cheap TV.

I,ve purposefully omitted to describe these three examples as bonsai, in a sense they are all mallsai, that is to say they are products of marketing designed to a price. I see these three trees as succesfull in there own context and all have merit and the growers have my admiration on the level of technical expertise shown.

To me art comes into bonsai when I can see a personal touch to a bonsai, when a personal style has been developed. Look at the work of Walter Pall, Robert Steven or Nick Lenz, there is no mistaking who,s work is who,s is there?

So whilst I think that commercial "bonsai" can show great technical competence, whilst the are designed by marketing and mass produced they can not be art.I know I,m talking apples and orangutangs here but the idea I,m trying to get across is that although a ford fiesta is not considered art and maybe a classic aston martin is, the ford fiesta is still a good car. thoughts? Andrew