Coffee Table Book of: Temples (Hardcover)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Temples is a large format book of temples, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: wooden, brick and stone pagodas, vermilion and stone torii, quiet shrines, whitewashed stupas, mountain monasteries and temple gardens, standing empty at many hours and in every season, with their bells, lanterns, roofs and bare halls seen close.

Pagodas rise above a valley of dawn mist and a slope of red maples, stand in deep snow at blue dusk and double themselves in a still pond, while a brick pagoda glows on a dry hill at sunset and a small stone one stands before a golden ginkgo. Torii stand in the shallows of a lake at dawn, on a snowy field, on a rock by a calm sea and over a path among tall cedars.

Stupas stand on a high bare pass, on a dry plain at sunrise, on green grass at dusk and dark against an orange sky, one green with moss among ferns and one held fast in the roots of a great fig. Monasteries cling to a cliff above a sea of cloud, keep watch on a ridge under the stars, lie in a green valley and among autumn woods, and gather round a courtyard of fresh snow, with a thatched hut, a bell tower on a spur and a covered bridge over a gorge.

The gardens hold moss under maples, lotus in a summer pond, plum blossom over a white wall, irises by stepping stones, azaleas by a stone bridge, a bamboo grove, a pavilion on a pond island and a dry garden of raked gravel and rock, while a lone walker climbs a mountain stair, crosses a snowy courtyard, walks a cedar avenue and sweeps the autumn leaves.

Short notes run through the book, on how temples, shrines, pagodas and stupas were built, what their gates, bells, lanterns and gardens are for, and the daily round of temple life: large temple bells have no clapper: they are struck from outside with a swinging wooden log, buddhists walk round a stupa clockwise, keeping it always on their right, small bells hang from the corners of pagoda roofs and ring in the wind, and the crossed boards and short logs on a shrine roof ridge come from very old ways of building.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a hardcover with the art printed on the case.