Page 14 - Tạp chí bonsai cây cảnh BCI 2014Q3

Why judge bonsai?

All in the Eye of the Beholder

By Kath Hughes, UK
Photos courtesy Malcolm Hughes
Part Two. Part Three coming soon. Part One was published in Q2, 2014;

he reasons why we exhibit our trees are as vari-
ous as are the types of trees we own. Some of
us are club members and the pinnacle of our
ambition is to see our club exhibit prove itself
Tagainst other club exhibits. Many of us are in-
dividualists looking to own the very best tree; maybe
we spent vast sums to import it from Japan, or perhaps
we nurtured it for many, many years from a seedling or
a cutting, or like most of us, purchased first or second
rate potential material, and hopefully proved ourselves
by producing a masterpiece. Whatever your method,
1 our aims are very similar—an Award of Merit, a First
in its Class, or maybe even Best in Show.
It takes a long, long time to get there even if we spent
lots on money. Do we know how to exhibit that tree
to full advantage? Is it properly prepared for showing?
Is it in the correct pot? Or even is the pot clean and
weed free? What about a stand to display it on—is it
the right size and color? Do we need a scroll and an
accent plant to display with it—if so what is the right
kind? Oh, so many things to think about before we
are ready to display.
This is just for individual trees standing alone on a
bench or in a Tokonoma. What if is to be part of much
larger display for your club or even part of a National
exhibit? This adds further dimensions —what about
2
the relation to all the other trees exhibited, size, color,
direction of movement, proximity to each other—all
these are more things to puzzle over. It seems endless
and overwhelming when you think about it for the
first time.
Making rules for doing all these things can be in-
credibly restrictive. Rules are not flexible by their very
nature and if you are too rigid, creativity cannot flour-
ish. However judging without some form of rules is
chaos. Balancing rules against innovation is a perva-
sive problem in all of life. As ageism is pervasive and
entrenched in our society, so elitism is pervasive in
3

12 | BCI | July/August/September 2014