Stone Bridge Press The Japanese Tea Garden

Anything Keane has done about Japanese Gardens is great. I'm a Volunteer Guide at Portland's beautiful Japanese Garden, so am most interested in JG. Part of our Garden is a tea house and tea garden. Keane does a fine job of explaining and illustrating both. As in all his books, Keane includes beautiful photos and clear, well-written explanations. The book is essential for any library on the subject.

Livre important je le recommande l'écriture et les photos sont très bien réalisées.

The Japanese Tea Garden is a good buy. It is one of very few books on the subject of the Tea Garden but doesn't rest on those laurels to impress. It is well organized, intelligent and allows the authors to display their deep knowledge of the subject. The book is printed on heavy, glossy paper and is luxuriously illustrated with photgraphs, ancient prints and line drawings. It is not a "How To" book on creating Japanese Gardens but those looking for instruction and guidance will find quite a bit between the lines. The history is thoroughly researched and explained. There is lots of discussion on gardens from all eras, supported by illustrations. I would have liked to see a deeper analysis of several gardens showing the techniques used by the designers to overcome the challenges of the specific sites. The line drawings of tea gardens are good but a little hard to follow at the scale in which they are printed. Perhaps some shading or greying would have helped me in my understanding of the drawings. Over all I am very pleased with my purchase and would recommend this book to anyone interested in enjoying or learning more about Japanese Tea Gardens. G

Great text very informative book, but the shifting co lour balance of the photographs is disturbing, mostly a yellow mist, generally a lack of contrast, no blacks in the shadows, As the book is all about tranquility and wabi sabi the photo renditions spoil this.

Besides having beautiful pictures, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this is a serious scholarly work about the history of tea gardens. It is very thorough, easy to understand even though it's scholarly (although the writing style isn't the most captivating -- this isn't pop lit), organized, and very useful for a student of tea or Japanese gardens.