lamdha books -
Catalogue of books on Oriental gardens, styles and techniques

Click on the small images at right to see a larger picture

63863 Cave, Philip (Foreword by Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe) Creating Japanese Gardens Aurum Press Ltd., London, 1997. Quarto; hardcover, with silver-gilt spine titles and black endpapers; 176pp., with plans and schematics, full-colour and monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; board edges lightly scraped. Dustwrapper mildly rubbed and edgeworn; now backed by archival-quality white paper and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good to near fine. For the Japanese, the garden is a microcosm of the world, full of abstract symbols. This book brings this great tradition within the scope of any modern gardener through an examination of its philosophy and the meaning of its essential features, providing the knowledge and techniques for Westerners to understand and design a Japanese-style garden in the true spirit of the art. The author gives practical and aesthetic explanations of every aspect of a Japanese composition, from earliest design stages to actual construction and maintenance. With many colour photographs. Click here to order $25

30835 Conder, Josiah Landscape Gardening in Japan Shuyeisha, Japan, 1912. Hardcover, folio, 161pp., 37 monochrome and sepia plates, numerous diagrams (some lightly coloured). Preliminaries foxed, spotted; some spotting throughout; repaired with new spine; gilt illustrations to boards, slightly worn at edges. Very good given age. This is the second edition of Conder's influential treatise on Japanese landscape gardening, which introduced Japanese gardening to the West. The favourable reception accorded to his work on the "Flowers of Japan" encouraged the author to issue another volume on the more comprehensive Art of Landscape Gardening. The present volume is an exposition of the rules and theories of that art, as followed from ancient to modern times, so far as they can be gathered from a thorough study of native authorities, added to personal observation of the best remaining examples. The chapters range from an historical overview of Japanese gardens, through to studies of landscaping components that include garden stones, lanterns, pagodas, water basins, enclosures, wells, bridges, and arbours, with a final trio of chapters covering ornamental water, vegetation, and garden composition. The line drawings are particularly beautiful for their refined subtlety. Click here to order $800

212180 Covello, Vincent T., & Yuji Yoshimura The Japanese Art of Stone Appreciation Suiseki and its Use with Bonsai Tuttle Publishing, North Clarendon VT, 2009. Octavo; paperback; 160pp., colour illustrations. Remainder. New. Click here to order $13

207540 Eliovson, Sima Gardening the Japanese Way A.H. & A. W. Reed Ltd., Wellington New Zealand, 1970. Quarto; hardcover, with decorative endpapers; 215pp., with a full-colour frontispiece and 58pp. of plates likewise. Minor wear; somewhat rolled; spotting to the text block edges; light offset to the endpapers and mild spotting to the preliminaries. Dustwrapper is a little rubbed; lightly sunned along the spine panel; now backed by archival-quality white paper and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Click here to order $35

30818 Engel, David H. (Foreword by Richard Neutra) Japanese Gardens for Today Charles E. Tuttle Company, Rutland VT, 1959. Second printing. Quarto; hardcover, full cloth with decorative cloth inserts and decorative endpapers; 270pp., with many monochrome illustrations. Moderate wear; cocked; text block and page edges toned; offset to the preliminaries; a sticker ghost to the flyleaf. Price-clipped dustwrapper rubbed with some creasing; now backed by archival-quality white paper and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. "Japanese Gardens for Today is a memento against shallow and fast change. Leaving aside the matter of ritual symbolism, I have always felt the Japanese garden to be a design in time as well as in space. In it, the eternity of shape is kept before our soul by many laborious but rewarding hours of inconspicuous maintenance. In its volumes and in its space relations a twelfth-century garden looks today just as it did hundreds of years ago, although it is composed, not of mummies and relics, but largely of living plants. This is a time cult; it points to the significance time has to life... Japanese towns, villages, houses, and gardens are often miracles of land economy, brought about both out of necessity and from a general sense of thrift. This book gives much more than a glimpse of 'humanized naturalism' of the Japanese landscape, a landscape that proves that even a tightly massed civilization need not spell the defilement of the natural scene but, in fact, can mean its glorification." - Richard Neutra. Click here to order $50

204754 Goto, Seiko The Japanese Garden Gateway to the Human Spirit Peter Laing Publishing Inc., New York NY, 2003. Octavo; paperback; 209pp., with maps diagrams and many monochrome illustrations. Remainder. New. Click here to order $15

207471 Herrigel, Gustie l. (R.F.C. Hull, trans.) Zen in the Art of Flower Arrangement Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1958. First edition. Small octavo hardcover; red boards with silver gilt spine titling; 124pp., monochrome line drawings. Owner's name stamp. Offsetting to endpapers; mild rubbing to board edges and corners; spotting to upper text block edge. Small missing segments to spine panel extremities and corners of decorated dustwrapper, browned spine panel and tape reinforcement to some corners and spine extremities; a few spots. Very good. Wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film with white paper backing. Japanese masters have developed the techniques of ikebana over centuries and, while many different styles have evolved, they all share the same fundamental principles. The art embodies aesthetic considerations, knowledge of the natural forms of plants, and a profound understanding of the space around them. This book explains these principles by describing the lessons learned from master arranger Bokuyo Takeda. It demonstrates that ikebana is a process of achieving spiritual enlightenment and the craft of arranging flowers a form of meditation. Click here to order $75

210128 Keswick, Maggie (with Charles Jencks) The Chinese Garden History, Art & Architecture Academy Editions, London, 1978. Quarto; hardcover, full cloth with gilt spine titles; 216pp., with many full-colour and monochrome illustrations. Mild wear; text block edges toned and lightly spotted; offset to the preliminaries. Dustwrapper is lightly rubbed and edgeworn; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. A classic of the subject, in a scholarly and accessible way, this work traces the Chinese garden back through the earliest records, and explains its influence on, and how it was influenced by, philosophy, painting, architecture and literature. An exploration of Chinese culture, and how this culture manifested itself in the art of garden-making and design, "The Chinese Garden" provides unique insights into a great civilization and an intimate glimpse of the lives of the artists, scholars, poets and emperors who made it. Click here to order $45

90248 Masuno, Shunmyo (James Grayson Trulove, ed.) Ten Landscapes Rockport Publishers, Rockport CT, 1999. Small square quarto hardcover; black boards with silver gilt spine titling, black endpapers and black half-title, title, contents, and foreword pages; 103pp., colour illustrations and monochrome plans. Minor wear; tiny scrapes on board corners and faint spotting to upper text block edges. Very good to near fine otherwise in like dustwrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Shunmyo Masuno is the holder of many degrees and awards in horticulture and landscape gardening, both from Japan and across the globe, and is also a Buddhist monk. His landscape designs encompass all the aspects of traditional Japanese and Buddhist gardens and take these essential tropes onto a higher level of aesthetic creativity. The gardens showcased in this volume range from the traditional to the avant-garde, reflecting the deceptive intricacy of minimalist design and the possibilities it can provide. Click here to order $20

30819 Mori, Osamu (Atsuo Tsuroka, trans.) Typical Japanese Gardens Shibata Publishing, Tokyo Japan, 1962. Quarto; hardcover, with silver-gilt spine and board titles; 161pp., with many full-colour and monochrome illustrations. Mild wear; spine extremities softened; text block edges toned; retailer's bookplate to the front pastedown. Dustwrapper mildly rubbed and edgeworn; now backed by archival-quality white paper and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Click here to order $35

210127 [Nippon Flower Designers' Association] Japan Flower Design Award 2004 Authorized by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Technology Nippon Flower Designers' Association, Tokyo Japan, 2004. Quarto; paperback, with silver-gilt upper board titles; unpaginated, text in Japanese, with many full-colour illustrations. Mild wear; some surface tears to the front cover where the dustwrapper has adhered. Dustwrapper is lightly rubbed and edgeworn. Laid in: the original receipt and a printed translation of the contents. Click here to order $30

84141 Sato, Shozo The Art of Arranging Flowers A Complete Guide to Japanese Ikebana Harry N. Abrams, New York, nd. (1965). Quarto; hardcover, full decorative silk cloth with gilt spine and upper board titles, and a tipped-on upper board decoration; 366pp., with a tipped-in full-colour frontispiece, many monochrome illustrations and 57 tipped-in colour plates. Moderate wear; a little shaken; spine heel softened; spine lightly sunned; text block edges toned. Plastic sleeve dustwrapper is wrinkled and rubbed with some light edgewear and a few small tears. Very good. Ikebana has a recorded history. It has undergone a coherent development. It has a technical discipline backed up by articulate theories; and it is concerned with creativity. That Ikebana is a fully-fledged art in Japan may be attributed to several factors; the celebrated Japanese love of nature - Ikebana arrangements aim not at bringing a finite piece of nature into the house, but at suggesting the whole of nature and at creating a link between indoors and outdoors; the age-old Japanese tendency to associate a wide range of human emotions with flowers - in classical Japanese poetry, for example, the very mention of a flower's name is often enough to evoke a whole series of ideas, images and meanings - a cherry blossom is not merely a beautiful flower, it is also a symbol of manliness and bravery: it blossoms briefly but gloriously, than falls quickly before it has withered. In this sense then Ikebana arrangements are expected not only to establish a link between man and nature, but to create a mood or atmosphere appropriate to the season and even the occasion; still another factor is the architecture of the traditional Japanese house which would have at least one room with a special alcove known as a tokonoma where the principal decorations of the house would be displayed, thus providing a setting, not to mention an interior space in which the rooms are dominated by straight lines, rectangular surfaces and relatively neutral colours which would be an opportunity to depart from these severe plain geometric patterns with experimentations in line, colour and dimension. The aim of this book is to give a complete introduction to Ikebana and a firm foundation in the use of Moribana techniques. Five principal styles are investigated - Rikka, Nageire, Seika, Moribana and Abstract together with important variations. The art of Ikebana is considered in history, tradition and the influence of Western thinking, western flowers and decorative styles. A late chapter discusses the use of stands and vases. Click here to order $100

43373 Schaarschmidt-Richter, Irmtraud & Osamu Mori (Janet Seligman, trans.) Japanese Gardens William Morrow and Co, New York NY, 1979. Quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titles; 326pp., with many full-colour and monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; retailer's bookplate to the front pastedown. Price-clipped dustwrapper mildly edgeworn. Near fine in a rubbed plain card slipcase. A visual celebration of Japanese gardens, their rich historical background, their infinitely varied style and composition, their social importance as places of pleasure and meditation and unique visual effects as works of art. The book discusses gardens in terms of function with chapters on the pond-garden or pleasure garden, the garden of contemplation (usually found adjacent to a temple or palace intended to be admired from afar), and the tea-garden into which the elements of both the pond-garden and dry landscape garden are introduced. From many perspectives the book aims to show how the Japanese garden developed as a work of art and how it appears to the spectator, guiding the reader to an understanding of how one garden differs from another. The book concludes with an essay by Professor Osamu Mori, one of the foremost students of the history of the Japanese garden and a noted landscape artist himself, who gives a thorough account of the history of gardens and ongoing excavations and restorations. Click here to order $100

86104 Stamm, Joan D. Heaven and Earth are Flowers Reflections on Ikebana and Buddhism Wisdom Publications, Somerville MA, 2010. Paperback, octavo, 168pp., colour plates. New. Remainder. Joan Stamm shows us how her twin paths of Buddhist practice and artistic endeavour converge and indeed become thoroughly intertwined. Stamm's lush, elegant voice weaves childhood memories of her mother's joy at a just-bloomed morning glory with meditations on the symbolic importance of bamboo, of pine, of the lily. She takes us with her on her travels to Japan as she learns the essential principles of ikebana, and lets us join her as she teaches flower arranging to women in a nursing home who, though they won't recall tomorrow the rules of arrangement or even the flowers' names, nonetheless partake in the joy and love that celebrates all living things, however briefly they endure. And, when Joan shows us the natural symmetry of a blossom, we find that we too have regained our balance. Click here to order $15

85104 Takama, Shinji (illus.) Bamboo of Japan Splendour in Four Seasons Graphic-sha Publishing, Tokyo, 1986. Square quarto softcover; 96pp., colour illustrations. Inscription to owner. Minor wear; lightly spotted cover spine with a few random spots on front; mild scuffing to dustwrapper with minimal wear to edges. Very good to near fine otherwise. Gathers photographs of bamboo forests and groves, bamboo shoots, leaves, blossoms, and roots, and gardens, mountains, and wildflowers. Click here to order $18

202733 Valder, Peter The Garden Plants of China - signed copy Florilegium, Glebe NSW, 1999. Quarto; hardcover, with upper board titles; 400pp., with many full-colour illustrations. Mild wear; slightly rolled; softening to the spine extremities; some minor marks to the rear free endpaper; signed by the author in ink to the half-title page. Dustwrapper mildly rubbed; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Valder gives us a window on a sophisticated garden aesthetic very different from Europe's, and an encyclopedia of more than 4000 Chinese garden plants. Combining vast research as well as information and photographs from his many trips to China, he presents a comprehensive volume on ornamental plants in the gardens of China. This splendid book is an important addition to the otherwise scanty and scattered literature in English on China's contribution to the garden splendour of the West and should be added to every library's horticultural section. Click here to order $75

207541 Whiten, Faith & Geoff Chinese Garden Style Unwin Hyman Ltd., London, 1988. Quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titles; 127pp., with many full-colour and monochrome illustrations. Minor wear. Dustwrapper mildly rubbed; now backed by archival-quality white paper and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Click here to order $25

88688 William Warren & (photos. Luca Invernizzi Tettoni) Balinese Gardens Periplus Editions, Singapore, 1995. Large quarto hardcover; green papered boards with gilt spine titling, dark green endpapers; 190pp., colour illustrations. Slight fading to spine edges front and rear of dustwrapper. Otherwise near fine in like dustwrapper and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Balinese Gardens captures the lush volcanic landscapes and gardens of this magical isle; gardens which are further enhanced by traditional ornamental sculpture, tranquil ponds fountains and sacred springs. The author investigates the effects of these landscapes on notable visitors to these gardens and at the same time provides an overview of the island's geography and plant life, with some interesting insights into the role of nature in Balinese culture. Traditional gardens found in Bali's villages, temples and palaces are also recorded. Click here to order $45

207758 Yoshimura, Yuji & Giovanna M. Halford The Japanese Art of Miniature Trees and Landscapes Their Creation, Care, and Enjoyment Charles E. Tuttle Co. Publishers, Rutland VT, 1961. Royal octavo; hardcover, quarter-bound in full cloth with gilt spine and upper board titles and decorations and decorative endpapers; 220pp., with many full-colour and monochrome illustrations. Mild wear; minor offset to the preliminaries. Dustwrapper lightly rubbed; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Click here to order $45

81319 Yun, Qian Classical Chinese Gardens Joint Publishing Company and China Building Industry Press, Hong Kong, 1982. Quarto hardcover; white silk boards with blind stamped upper board decoration and red spine titling, lilac and grey illustrated endpapers; 240pp., colour illustrations and monochrome diagrams with square octavo stapled booklet on Chinese gardens, monochrome illustrations, laid in. Owner's name. Boards with light foxing especially along edges; scattered spotting on half-title page. Red illustrated dustwrapper slightly faded along spine and edges; minimal scuffing and edgewear. Very good with wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Click here to order $40