- Publisher
- Tuttle Publishing
- Published
- 2014
- Shelf
- culture: Japan
- ISBN
- 9784805312506
Japan
Japanese Design: Art, Aesthetics & Culture
Patricia J. Graham
A short history of Japanese design objects and the aesthetic ideas (iki, shibui, kawaii) standing behind them.
Why read it
Graham connects the vocabulary to the objects: which taste term a tea bowl, a Sony radio and a Hello Kitty pencil case each belong to, and which historical moment each category descends from. It turns a set of words that usually float into something you can actually apply.
Why own it
A compact, well-illustrated reference sitting between the coffee-table survey and the academic monograph, the kind of book you check before a project and lend out afterwards.
Who it is for
Designers working with Japanese references who would like to get them right.
Opens a search on AbeBooks, a network of independent and antiquarian sellers, which is where a good part of this shelf has to be found, because it is out of print.
Read next
Chosen because they argue with this one, not because a machine noticed they share a category.
