• Bonsai trees are an Oriental art form perfected by the Japanese.bonsai tree image by Alexey Stiop from Fotolia.com
  
  Oriental arts and crafts are creative and elegantly intriguing. They have a subtle beauty that appears to increase the more you study the object. Centuries of refinement may have resulted in more modern materials, but the putting of brush to paper or the snipping of a tiny branch is still done in much the same fashion as they were long ago.
  
  

Origami

• Origami is the Japanese art of paper folding that dates back to about the sixth century. Buddhist monks brought paper into that country from China and the folding began. Origami was originally a practice of the wealthier classes since paper was an expensive commodity. It was not considered a hobby, but rather a more formal art form.
  
  Folded origami shapes accompanied expensive gifts and carefully crafted paper butterflies decorated Japanese wine (saki) bottles at weddings. The wedding butterfly is considered to be one of the oldest known origami designs. It wasn’t until the 1950s that the art form became widely known, thanks to Akira Yoshizana and Sam Randlett, who standardized the origami folding symbols that are still in use today.
  
  The art form has blossomed. Some of the folds have become so complex that they require exacting mathematical formulas to turn out properly. There are so many origami books on the market that it is easy to find books for folders of all levels. Turning a square of white paper into an elegant crane can be quite rewarding.
  
  

Chinese Brush Painting

• Chinese brush painting is a very old art form, dating back to about 4,000 B.C. Landscape paintings became popular by the fourth century and eventually there were two accepted styles. One used blues, greens and reds and were called the “blue-and-green landscapes.” The other method was called the “ink-and-wash landscape.” This was done by using black ink mixed with various amount of water and brushstrokes delivered with different degrees of pressure.
  
  The materials used in Chinese brush paintings have remained basically the same. Ink is made fresh for each use by adding water to bits of ground ink cake that the artist has ground up on his stone palette. The more water, the more translucent the ink. The painter uses either absorbent Chinese paper, similar to watercolor paper, or Chinese silk. The brush, usually made of rabbit or sheep’s hair, has a finer tip than most western style watercolor brushes.
  
  

Bonsai Trees

• Bonsai trees are living pieces of art. These tiny trees are usually associated with Japan but they originated in China. Buddhist monks who traveled to Japan from China brought the art form with them in around 1195 A.D. At first only the monks and then the aristocracy kept the bonsai trees. The little trees were brought inside to decorate homes and palaces.
  
  It was not until the late 17th and early 18th centuries that the practice of meticulously pruning and tying branches to make them grow a certain way became perfected. It was during this time that the general public became interested in the art of bonsai. More people took trees from the wild, trimmed and shaped them and placed them in small, relatively flat containers to inhibit growth.
  
  Today bonsai trees are worldwide. They thrive in public Japanese gardens, accent household décor and keep hobbyists busy with their clippers, wire ties and bamboo skewers. Traditional Japanese bonsai plants are maples, pines and azaleas.