Coffee Table Book of: Badminton (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Badminton is a large format book of badminton, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: feather shuttlecocks and light rackets, nets strung across lawns, meadows and quiet halls, the kit being made and cared for, the old garden game the sport grew from, and a few players seen far off in plain dark clothing.

The kit is laid out plain: a feather shuttlecock standing on its cork base, another caught in the mesh of a net, one with broken feathers beside a whole one, a nylon shuttle, a racket seen from above, a racket bag, a tube of shuttles, a basket of shuttles for practice, court shoes, a towel, a fresh grip and the tight strings of a racket seen close.

The making follows white goose feathers sorted by size, domed cork bases, the thread that binds the feathers, a racket half strung and a new line painted on a hall floor. The past runs from a battledore of parchment and an old shuttlecock to a wooden racket held in its press, a racket strung with gut, a boxed garden set, old yellowed shuttles in a bowl, turned wooden net posts and canvas plimsolls.

Then the places, empty at every hour and in every season: nets strung across a walled garden, an orchard, a country house lawn, a village green, meadows, moors and a headland, a lakeshore, a hollow in the dunes, a cobbled courtyard, a village square, a terrace above the sea and a cabin deck, halls at first light, at noon and on snowy nights, a barn at dusk, a boat shed and a glasshouse in the rain, an old mill floor and a drill hall, and a few small players far off, serving, lunging, smashing and walking out to the net at dawn.

Short notes run through the book, on the rules and how the game is played, the shuttles, rackets and nets and how they are made, and the history of the sport: a shuttlecock has 16 feathers fixed in a rounded cork base, in flight a shuttle always turns to travel cork first, its feathers trailing behind, the base is a domed piece of natural cork, often covered with thin white leather, and the feathers are glued and tied with thread just above the base, so they keep their shape.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.