At the Pacific Northwest Bonsai Convention, Michael Hagedorn gave a very
nice presentation on pots and matching them to trees. He included quite a
few pictures from a visit to Japan and commented that pots that have a great
feeling of age are far more valuable than those that are perfect. The most
common signs of age are water and some lime stains around the base, but I
imagine that the small nicks and dings that come from long use would also
qualify. He said that it appears that only in the United States is it
desirable to display a tree that is designed to look very old in a pot that
looks like it just came out of the kiln (or has been oiled/polished to look
even newer). In fact pots are often stored under the benches for several
years to get them going on the feeling of age before they are used.

As a former and hopefully future potter I can see both points. The
craftsman potter likes to turn out pots that are just as they designed them
(perfect including the impact of variable firing factors) but that also have
patina and a feeling of permanence - wabi/sabi. I am not sure exactly where
the line is between a pot that shows the ages and one that is abused, but a
broken that has been pot repaired is definitely not on the desirable side of
the line in my book. That being said I plan to build a new interior from
fiberglass for a large pot that arrived from Japan with the bottom shattered
and the rim broken in two places. The tree will be shown locally and only a
couple of people will know, but "I" will need a new pot for anything beyond
Spokane.

Most undesirable (imperfect?) work is normally destroyed - I remember
smashing more than a garbage can worth of my mother's work in her final days
- it was good enough to have around as examples (she was a teacher), but she
did not want it around after her death (my brother and I slipped a few pots
away that we wanted to remember her by that had been placed in the destroy
pile).

Marty

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