Top-30 in Europe

In the past ten days there was an exhibit in Mulhouse, France whcih was called 'Top_30 of Europe'. It was a part of a large garden fair. Here are 20 of tehe 30 trees that I could make a somewhat decent image of. All these photographs I made from hand. Sorry for the quality.

Howzit Walter,

Beautiful specimens. Interesting lighting of the trees. Mahalo for sharing.

A Hui Hou,
-Tim

I have missed a couple unfortunately. The images did not turn out well.

...what a pity I am not there with my film camera...

Breathtaking...

Thanks for sharing Walter.

Regards
Brent

Very inspiring!
Beautiful designs, I am much impressed.
Will be looking again and again.
Thank you.
Khaimraj

Walter,

a good tree doesnt need a good picture quality to show its natural beauty.

thanks...very inspiring.

regards,
jun

This link has a video of the exhibition as well.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xf688u_bonsai-euro-top-30-les-arbres-du-so_creation

nice trees..thanks for posting..

Fantastic trees !!! Thanks walter.

walter,
the tree on the slab...was that your tree?

regards,
jun

Jun,

sure, I had three trees there.

thanks Walter.
whats the other two?

the maple and pine? just guessing.

regards,
jun

sure jun.

thanks Walter.

again, very nice trees...

regards,
jun

So Walter, 10% of the Europe’s "Top 30" are then in your collection!
And I always thought that it must be more then 10%....
M

Thanks Walter for posting the images of some very nice trees. Having said that I was also a little disappointed to see that two of my favourite trees - your Famous Rocky Mountain Juniper and your equally famous Multi Trunk Maple got missed out. Not sure if the organisers of this event left them out or if you chose not to enter them. Do let me know the exact reason. I am also curious to know what the selection criteria was and how the 30 were chosen.

Ravi

Oh well, Ravi, this was much discussed. About 90 % of the 1,000 best trees in Europe are in the hands of maybe 10 to 20 folks. 3to 6 of these have again 80 % of these. There are people who have 50 candidates for the '30 best'. But it would be unwise to grant some individuals MUCH more space than others. Just take it that 30 of the best trees in Europe were there. My guess is that there are several hundred trees which could have qualified.
The selection process? Well, in my case it was like this: I was asked to provide three trees and I chose these. I could have chosen quite a few other ones.

Hi Walter

Very nice trees and very interesing fotos.

Thank you for sharing.

Pavel

Wonderful work! I think # 11 is my favorite. However, if I come back tomorrow, I may find another favorite.

Mike

This is not a virtual. It is for real. Now I know why there were so many people in the bonsai tents. It was hard to take photographs because the masses were moving you.

It is almost impossible to make a decent living of doing bonsai professionally as an art form in Europe. But it is very much possible to make some money exhibiting good bonsai. Or it looks like, at least. Unfortunately the money does not arrive at the artists. So far.

The overwhelming majority of bonsai exhibits aim at the bonsai crowd. No surprise they hardly break even. You cannot sell expensive bonsai to the general public, but you can very well show them. And they will come, you bet.

This tramway advertisement reveals why the flashy name 'Top-30-of-Europe'. it is not for the bonsai crowd but for the general crowd. In these 10 days there were probably around 500 or so from the bonsai crowd and maybe more than 100.000 from the general crowd. They paid 2.- euro extra for the bonsai show. This makes more than 200.000 euro, a sum absolutely unheard of for the conventions we know. Now one sees where the money comes from. All these are my personal guesses and I have not more information than anybody who can read.
If we have to get used to this it will be fine with me. This may well be a way to get bonsai exhibts away from parochialism.