Bamboo

de Robert Austin, Koichiro Ueda, Dana Levy

'The world of bamboo is brilliantly and elegantly explored in this book that combines and authoritative text, dealing with the technical aspects of bamboo, with 162 pages of stunning photographs, including 32 in full colour. In the West, bamboo is most often thought of as a rare, exotic plant, ornamental in nature. In the East, however, the rustling bamboo grove is a familiar sight and the uses the plant is put to are so countless that life there would be unthinkable without it. The introductory text captures for the reader the vitality and versatility that are the essence of bamboo. As the author examines some of the plant's more curious uses and its important role in the folklore, poetry, and culture of the East, a vivid, sympathetic portrait emerges. The closing text discusses the cultivation of bamboo, including commercial forests, square bamboo, and bonsai, as well as giving advice on the raising of varied and colorful species in the Western garden. Bamboo emerges as a remarkable plant, capable of infinite variety but carrying within itself a peculiar doom, for when it flowers--once in a hundred years--it dies. The photographs are a visual extension of the text. The reader first sees the bamboo as a part of nature, now in the majestic sweep of forest clusters, now in quiet reflections of slender shoots in a garden pool. The focus then shifts to bamboo as a building material for fences, walls, or moon-viewing platforms in imperial villas. SImple everyday objects made from bamboo are also considered: cups, buckets, ladles, writing brushes--all made to accord with the nature of the plant itself, not with the dictates of some unrelated theory of craftsmanship. In the final section, the camera visits the workshops of skilled Japanese artisans and shows the intricate techniques, handed down from generation to generation, that go into making such objects as fans, flutes and bows and arrows. Again one realises how extraordinary and malleable a plant bamboo is and how fully it deserves the respect and honor the East accords it.