"Ever since the World's Fair, when the Japanese government laid out a dwarf landscape in front of the Japanese building on the Wooded Island [at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and Exposition], interest in the dwarfed forest trees produced by Chinese and Japanese gardeners has been growing in this country.  There are now exhibitions and sales of these every year in seaports that deal with the Orient and gnarled miniature oaks and pines are used as decorative plants in greenhouses and retail florists' windows.  These little trees, which are from 1 to 3 feet in height, are perfect forest trees on a small scale, with gnarled trunks and branches and with the wrinkled bark and knotted roots of old age.
       "The secret of dwarfing plants came from the Chinese.  Pine and other conifers are the favorite trees for dwarfing, for the foliage remains green all the year around, and the plants may be taken into the house for winter decoration.  In making the dwarf, the gardener breaks a branch from a tree.  Just below an 'eye'on the branch he cuts and removes a ring of bark.  Then he sticks the branch in a ball of specially prepared earth.  This he crams into a flower pot and keeps it moist enough to start the roots.  After the roots are well grown the water supply is lessened.  As the branch puts out limbs these are clamped with wire bands to produce a rugged and ancient look.  The roots are kept down by cutting.  Honey is smeared on the trunks to attract insects which give it a wormeaten appearance.
       "So constantly does the tree struggle against these conditions that it sometimes takes twenty years' work on the part of the gardener before it accepts its fate and concludes to live out the rest of its life in its dwarfed condition. -- Little Chronicle." 1

1     Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 2, 1900, pg. 21.  So, where is there a list of all these exhibition and sale sites and dates?  Were the "wire bands" steel wire?