Bonsai Pots
Welcome to the Beautiful Bonsai Secrets blog! I will be posting to this blog regularly and aim to cover interesting topics and topical news items. It will be a mix of writing, photos and videos. If you have any comments or suggestions about what you would like to see here please let me know. To kick off I thought I’d share some thoughts on the importance of pots in bonsai.
Pots are to bonsai what frames are to pictures. The picture frame sets off to advantage the painting which it encloses. The loveliest bonsai would be unpleasant to the eye if the pot it’s planted in isn’t suitable. The tree and the pot must blend to make a harmonious whole if it’s to be a thing of beauty. Lack of harmony there will detract much from the intrinsic value of a bonsai.
As with clothes and shoes, size and style in a pot require important consideration. Just as a child’s shoes would never fit the feet of an adult, or conversely an adult’s shoes would look absurd on a child, so the relationship between plant and pot in a bonsai. No matter how lovely in colour and style a bonsai pot may be, if it overwhelms or overshadows the plant, it isn’t suitable for the purpose. The important thing in a pot is that it must help bring out the beauty, elegance, or sublimity of the tree.
Every bonsai tree must have a pot that suits it. A new one fresh from the kiln does not harmonize with a tree bearing the aura of age, any more than does an antique pot with a sapling. The same is true in regard to the shape and form. Deep, shallow, round, oblong; square, rectangular, and diamond-shaped pots — all these have their uses. One type of pot will do for all kinds of tulips, but different bonsai trees require different types of pots according to their form, size and shape.
Pots of gorgeous color are not appropriate for bonsai cultivation. Since the object of a bonsai is to suggest a landscape, the color of the pot should be symbolic of the earth or of rocks. For this purpose pots in quiet colors like dark brown, grey, black, dark red and dark purple are commonly chosen.
Here, as in other branches of Japanese art, sobriety is the keynote. It seems that the average horticulturist does not give as careful consideration to the colors and shapes of flowers-pots as do the devotees of bonsai culture.
Appreciation of the beautiful as expressed by the Japanese is characterized by a love of subdued effects. The Japanese aesthete often uses such untranslatable words as sabi and wabi, which can best be explained as the reverse of garish and gaudy, a condition suggesting the mellowed patina of age. One of the factors in elegance of pots or trays used for bonsai is soberness of colors.
Ancient patinated pots are in keeping with aged trees cultivated as bonsai. But antique pots do not harmonize with seedlings or saplings full of youth and vigor. For such trees and plants glazed pots or newly baked unglazed pots may be used to advantage.
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