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Customer Reviews
Until this reprint, it was much sought after and hard to find any copy of it.
The content of the book is a Western connoisseur's survey of Chinese furniture. It's not a scholarly work on its history (although a brief guide is included), nor is it a "how to make" project guide. What it does show is the devoted amateur's best effort (and a fine efort it is) to catalogue the furniture he saw at the time. It's this naive (in the best sense) nature that makes the book so valuable; these are simply pieces that were available to the author. Not a commercial selection by expert or exporter, not some chronological section contrived to tell a subjective history, just those pieces available in a comparatively un-Westernised China that appealed to the author's eye.
For an amateur's book of this time, the production quality was staggering. Originally produced as a cardboard portfolio with an huge 161 plates and many caligraphed pages, Dover have preserved much of the atmosphere whilst binding it into a more convenient form. Modern DTP standards means it's less impressive than it was, and it would be improved by rewriting the text to follow the relevant plates, but overall I'm happy they preserved the original character.
The drawings are of good quality, and detailed enough to allow reproduction by an experienced cabinetmaker. They are not simple though ! Nor are the designs or techniques amenable to easy copying by a Westerner. As a furniture maker, I doubt if I'm going to copy more than two curved lines from this book (but what curves they are !); the styles are just too alien for me to emulate. I'm still delighted to have read the book though, and if my construction techniques haven't changed, my design draughtsmanship has certainly been influenced.
Congratulations again to Dover Publications on reprinting another rare classic that deserves a wider audience. They, like Taunton, are on my list of woodwork book publishers where I'll happily buy any interesting topic they offer, sure in the knowledge that it will be well carried out.
Listmania!
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