
The Bonsai Kid - hownottowrite
http://craftsmanship.net/the-bonsai-kid/
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DiabloD3
The most interesting parts of the article to me:

"For a skill as rarified as bonsai, these services can be lucrative. On the
teaching front, for example, Neil typically has about 80 students who pay
between $1600 and $2400 a year for the privilege of spending several days at
Mirai during periods when the trees need a lot of work. Then there are Mirai’s
sales, which average 20 to 30 trees a year, with prices ranging from about
$1,200 to tens of thousands. On the other side of the ledger, Neil admits,
“our overhead is very high. We’ve already spent about $45,000 on pots this
year. I think we showed a profit for the first time last year, our fourth year
in a business.”"

"Another tree, which some sources have estimated to be up to 800 years old,
has reportedly commanded the highest price ever paid for a bonsai: $1.3
million."

All of the photos of those trees? They are art.

~~~
Palomides
certainly they are art.

it's interesting to me that you mention photos of the trees, it seems like an
easy and effective source of revenue to sell prints/photos of the trees (for
those who appreciate them but can't handle or afford the upkeep on an actual
bonsai), but there's none on his website.

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gbog
The japanese bonzai derives from chinese "penjing" but it is not quite the
same: the chinese (and vietnamese) do much more of the full landscape-on-a-
plate kind, where the trees are only a part of the work. This, to me, is
closer to the original intent of the thing: when you are too poor to have a
nice garden, you can still grab a stone and make a mock-up mountain in your
room. Then, with a bit of imagination, while looking at your penjing, you'll
have the most incredible trecks ever.

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watbe
> Unfortunately, given how slowly bonsai trees grow, this is not an event that
> can be staged annually. If it were, every artisan’s top trees would become
> redundant.

It's refreshing to feel the scale of slower-paced rewards compared to today's
expectations of near-instantaneous rewards.

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jchrisa
I've been getting into bonsai, and had the pleasure of attending the show they
put on in Portland this fall. It really was world-class, for all I can tell.

If you want a relaxing way to get a grasp on the hobby, this YouTube series is
awesome.
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8VbKcOcYctk](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8VbKcOcYctk)

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sandworm101
I know they are just plants, but part of me doesn't enjoy watching trees be
tortured into artificial shapes. I thought it was all about pruning, not
burning with chemicals. I had not realized exactly how mean one had to be to
create these things. I now see less art and beauty and more grotesque
deformation.

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hueving
If you think that's cruel, what could you possibly be eating?

~~~
j-pb
To be fair, there is a difference though, between cruelty for "art"s sake, and
killing to survive.

~~~
njharman
and there is a diffrence between killing to survive and the cruelty that most
(USA) food animals endure in factory farms.

~~~
j-pb
This comment was in regard to cruelty on plants that you eat.

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Cthulhu_
In case anyone wants a bonsai tree but is put off by this, you can get bonsai
trees in all shapes, sizes and budgets. I've had a small one once, but I
didn't water it enough. It still looked pretty when dead and dried out though.
(That actually is another type of decoration, I've seen them in glass display
cases)

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pavel_lishin
I didn't know how ... artificial this practice was. I didn't know they
literally wired up the trees to hold them in position.

~~~
bmer
Back when I was a teenager, I was really into bonsai for a bit, but was
quickly put off by how..."foot-binding-esque"...the art seemed.

I forget a lot of the details, but I do remember that there were some bonsai
styles, perhaps more modern than others (I am not sure about this), that
focused on limiting what tools one was allowed to use to shape the tree's
growth, and letting the plant grow naturally.

Perhaps others who know better can comment on what these bonsai styles are
called.

Anyway, even if I could recognize that bonsai were beautiful, I was way too
impatient to stick with it!

~~~
mikekchar
If you are interested in bonsai at a faster pace, you can bonsai other kinds
of plants. A favourite is chrysanthemum. Instead of pruning twice a year, you
are doing it every week or so. They are very demanding, though.

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j-pb
That video send shivers down my spine. Just watch it and imagine, that the guy
was a professional torturer.

The way he talks about the dance between manipulating and not killing the
thing, about walking the line of live and death for art's sake, while at the
same time pushing his desk full of pliers, chisels and wires to his "victim".

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_pmf_
This site is a goldmine of interesting stuff.

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nowprovision
This is nothing like Bonsai Kitten, complete click bait.

