American Bonsai Pots - Part 1, Some History
Pottery has been around longer than you might think. One of the earliest human inventions consisted of digging clay out of the earth, shaping it into something and then hardening it in fire. The archeological evidence suggests the first objects so created were simple decorative items like figurines. Humans began making ceramic vessels sometime later, the earliest known evidence of this activity being discovered in China and dating back around twenty thousand years. That means functional ceramic pottery arose in the early Stone Age. This new technology appeared around the same time independently in places all over the world, a fact that speaks to the invention's importance. Pottery pre-dates farming.
Neolithic clay figurines from ancient Greece, c. 6500 to 5300 BCE. Attribution: Heinrich Stürzi, Wikimedia Commons
Ceramic vessels became even more useful after agriculture took hold, for cooking purposes but also as a means of storing materials needed for, and produced by, farming. Somewhere along the way the idea came to someone that a plant might be dug up out of the earth and grown in soil contained within a ceramic vessel. Containerization of plants is a remarkable phenomenon that few people ever think about because it's been done forever and the practice is so widespread and common. The discovery that a plant might be taken out of its natural context, introduced to an artificial environment and kept alive and thriving over a prolonged period was revolutionary. Growing plants in pots meant that special, valuable plants could be kept living close at hand, preserved and protected, or be transported alive from place to place, and even used as a commodity in trade. The first impulse to grow plants in pots would have served some utilitarian purpose like that, but sooner or later someone would have put a plant in a pot just because they liked the way it looked. The idea of containerizing plants so they could be admired for aesthetic reasons caught on.
Neolithic pottery from ancient Greece, c. 5300 to 4500 BCE. Attribution: Wikimedia Commons
Containerized plants are most often grown in plastic pots these days, but ceramic ware is still preferred for finer display. Bonsai are containerized plants. A bonsai in grade school might be grown in a plastic pot, but as that bonsai advances in maturity and development it graduates to a container made of clay. A less expensive bonsai pot might be made of earthenware, but the better ones are usually stoneware. The difference between the two is primarily one of durability. To produce stoneware, the clay is fired at a higher temperature, a process that yields a tougher ceramic product that is non-porous to liquids. In this part of the world, where winter temperatures often go below freezing, any earthenware pot with a plant growing in it will likely crack when subjected to freezing. Stoneware stands up to the cycle of freezing and thawing.
The word bonsai is translated to mean "planted in a container." By definition, bonsai are never grown in the ground. A plant intended for bonsai use may spend many years growing in the ground starting out, but it can't be called a bonsai until it is removed from the earth and planted in a pot or on some sort of tray or slab. (In this context, the differences between pots, trays and slabs is not so important. The salient point is that such devices, no matter their form, act as the vehicle for a plant that is no longer growing in the ground. For the sake of convenience, the word container will stand to represent any such human-made vehicle.) The relationship between a bonsai and its container, therefore, is not casual. The greater aesthetic quality inherent in a skillfully rendered ceramic container lends greater visual appeal to the presentation of a bonsai. The container is the horticultural home of the bonsai, but it is also an element that strongly affects visual identity. The choice of container is critical to the artistic presentation of the bonsai that lives in or on it.
When bonsai activity in the United States first began in earnest early in the second half of the twentieth century, almost all bonsai containers were imported from either Japan or China. It was integral to the experience of doing bonsai correctly that the miniaturized plants be grown in containers that had the right look. The right look was the one modeled by bonsai from Japan. At first, no one was making those kinds of containers in the United States. Potteries in Japan and China had been producing bonsai containers for centuries, first for domestic use but eventually to meet increasing demand in foreign markets, so Western bonsai enthusiasts did business with them. Before long, however, a few individuals in the United States began producing their own bonsai pottery. Just as Western people learning bonsai imitated the Japanese example, so, too, did the first American potters making bonsai containers. There was a lot for these potters to learn and following the example of the unquestioned leaders in the field made sense.
The domestic bonsai pottery industry developed slowly, but it has come a long way. Part of the process has been building a market for containers that don't have the essence of authenticity that all bonsai pottery made in Japan automatically has. That is to say, bonsai pots from Japan were assumed to be good because there is a long tradition of bonsai pottery in that country, but bonsai pots made by American potters had to prove their worth. They did, too. American potters mastered the forms and techniques necessary to produce high-end stoneware bonsai containers, and some even reached a level of sophistication that their work could stand alongside quality imported ceramic ware. Over time, American sensibilities inevitably began to seep into the work American potters were doing. This is a natural aspect of an evolutionary process, where imitation gradually gives way to experimentation and an expanding idea of what might be possible. American bonsai potters began exploring different design possibilities and becoming more adventurous with glazes and other surface treatments. American bonsai potters began to produce work that looked distinctive and distinguishable in positive ways from the pots imported from Japan.
When The North Carolina Arboretum started out in the bonsai game, almost all of the containers we had were of Japanese or Chinese manufacture. These pots came to us in donations, some with trees in them and some without. We also purchased similar containers from an importer in Georgia. A few of our Japanese pots were of relatively high-end quality, but most were production-grade stuff. They were perfectly serviceable containers, but they were unexciting and looked like they came off an assembly line, which is not so far from the truth. Somewhere along the way I heard about a potter in Red Wing, Minnesota, who made bonsai containers that were generally thought to be pretty good. Her name was Sara Rayner and sometime in the very early 2000s I called her up and ordered some of her work, sight unseen. When her pottery arrived in the mail, I was pleased with the look of it. I can't claim to be an authority on bonsai pottery. I did, however, have the ability to examine Sara Rayner's work in comparison with the Japanese pottery we had and decide for myself which I preferred.
To be continued...
The images below depict six of the containers that came with the original bonsai donation in 1992:
This is an example of a better-quality Japanese container that was part of the original donation.
The container seen above was one of the first purchased by the Arboretum from Sara Rayner; it is made of porcelain. It was also the first container for this American hornbeam bonsai.
The hornbeam grew in the porcelain pot for just two years before being transplanted to the container seen above, which was also a Sara Rayner pot.
After three years in the previous container, the hornbeam was transplanted to the container seen above. This is also a Sara Rayner pot. Without any intention, this hornbeam has lived its entire bonsai career in a succession of Sara Rayner's pottery!