Product Description: An art form renowned for its beauty and technical wizardry, Japanese cloisonne enamel is becoming increasingly valued among collectors, artisans, and historians. This book provides a detailed history of Japanese cloisonne enamel and the development of its many technical varieties...read more

Product Description: Decatur proudly proclaims itself a city of "homes, schools, and places of worship." While that motto might seem to describe any number of small towns, the words accurately capture the essence of Decatur, a place of fine and humble homes, well-regarded schools, and large, active churches...read more

Product Description: An overview of Japanese art from the last four centuries, this newly updated edition is an indispensable survey of the V&A's greatest treasures from the Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art. The Museums superb Japanese holdings, acquired over a period of 150 years, begin with the international exhibitions of the second half of the 19th century and continue to the present day...read more

Product Description: While woven bamboo containers have been common in Asia for thousands of years, it is only in the past 150 years that basketry has become widely regarded as an art form. This stunning book celebrates contemporary Japanese bamboo masters whose breathtakingly beautiful and imaginative new works are changing the definition of basketry...read more

Product Description: Japanese gardens have long been admired for their capacity to improve on nature through impeccable design, detail and composition, properties that elevate them from mere gardens to sacred spaces. Infinite Spaces is a remarkable reflection of the Japanese garden, drawing on extracts from the Sakuteiki-an eleventh-century text that distills centuries of garden design-and pairing them with inspiring images from Sadao Hibi, one of Japan's best-known photographers...read more

An exhibition catalog featuring contemporary Japanese ceramics looks at thirty-five potters and offers fifty examples of their work produced during the last two decades.

Product Description: Between 1868 and 1912, Japan's leaders built a constitutional nation-state, developed an up-to-date industrial infrastructure and won major wars against China and Russia. They also preserved and nurtured their country's art traditions, inspiring the creation of works whose beauty and quality astonished the nations of the civilized world...read more

Product Description: As the "soul of the samurai," the sword is famously both the symbol and instrument of Japanese military prowess. Less known, at least in the west, is its role as a fashion accessory or status symbol. More than the weapon itself, it was the sword's metal fittings--from the hand guard to the small decorative plates on the hilt--that reflected the complexities of samurai life...read more

Product Description: Now Back in Print An elegant and insightful book. -- The Art Newspaper Exquisite. --Boston Globe Joe Earle . . . has enlightened us with new facts associated with the subjects portrayed in netsuke and new insight into the background of this unique world ...read more

Product Description: Originally published for the opening of the Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum, this book celebrates and sets in context many of its greatest treasures. The museum's Japanese holdings, acquired over a period of 150 years, started with the international exhibitions of the second half of the 19th century and the great private collections formed in Britain at the beginning of the 20th...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Shibata Zeshin (1807-91) combined unparalleled technical skill with a highly individualized style; his paintings and lacquers are imbued with traditional humor, energy, and grace, but are fully in tune with the innovative spirit of the Meiji period...read more

Product Description: The first exhibition of the Khalili Collection of Japanese lacquer by Shibata Zeshin was held in the Ivy Wu Galleries at the Royal Museum of Scotland in 1997 and consisted of 66 masterpieces, which are reproduced in full colour in this catalogue.

Product Description: Lacquer is the most characteristically Japanese of all the arts and this two-part volume describes the pieces in the Khalili Collection. The volume is sold with a free copy of Volume I: Selected Essays.

Shows Japanese arts and folk craft

Product Description: The Japanese sword combines unbreakability, rigidity, and lethal cutting power, and it is in the resolution of these conflicting practical requirements that it emerges as a triumph of the forger's art. The mystique of the sword lingers on in our age of mechanized combat, but the aesthetic qualities for which swords are most valued by collectors today-the liveliness of the metal "skin," the confidence in every aspect of the design, the scrolling temper-line, the almost buoyant lightness of the hilt when the blade is held in the hand-all derive from what the Japanese sword demanded as a symbol of strength and as a weapon...read more

Describes the history and function of netsuke, tiny Japanese carvings of people, animals, and plants, and shows a variety of figures carved from ivory and wood

Traces the history of Japanese woodcuts, and shows prints of actors, courtesans, and landscapes