The Complete Japanese Joinery

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This revised edition of the book contains a new foreword by Mira Locher, one of the world's leading experts on vernacular and modern Japanese architecture. She studied at Smith College before receiving her Master of Architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Brackett’s descriptions of his design and construction process, as well as of the wood material he uses, are enticing and provide a lot of technical and philosophical insight. Len Brackett, rigorously trained as a temple carpenter in Kyoto, has spent decades adapting the ancient Japanese design aesthetic to Western needs. If you're running a script or application, please register or sign in with your developer credentials here.

This book is a classic and is a beautifully informative excerpt from the author’s longer and more extensive The Japanese House: A Tradition for Contemporary Architecture which is long out of print. This introduction of Japanese joinery delves into the history and development of Japanese carpentry, and it also reveals many secrets of Japanese joinery. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.Brought two copies (one new, one used)as a gift for an arquitect friend who is a rabid fan of woodwork, and for myself, out of curiosity based on prevous rather superficial acquaintance with some aspects of Japanes culture.

They can be applied to projects as large as the buildings for which most of them were originally devised or as small as a sewing box. I’ve long been fascinated by many aspects of Japanese culture – from netsuke to monmon cats to bladesmithing to packaging to samurai armour – and especially their methods of carpentry and the tools they use to achieve it. Little has been thoroughly documented about the craft of timber construction in Japan (for an English-speaking audience, in particular), especially of the renowned temples, at least one of which can claim an almost unreal lifetime of over 1,000 years. The photos (both color and black and white) are fantastic, as are the highly intricate drawings of the Picture Hall assembly. In this post, you’ll find my review of Azby Brown’s The Genius of Japanese Carpentry, and details for how you can enter to win your own copy.I’d be excited to add this book to my collection since I try (at some level) to do some Japanese-style timber construction myself – I’ve so far put up about 8 small buildings, all centerline layout and little in the way of knee bracing. I am a second generation homebuilder and woodworker and am intensely fascinated with alternative ways of building that pay more respect to the materials we use.

This introduction to Japanese joinery not only delves into the unique history and development of Japanese carpentry, but also reveals many secrets of Japanese joinery. If you read the journals of 18th Century woodworkers you’ll find they were unbelievably fast —using only hand tools.Reminds me of the old Chinese architecture that’s been lost to the high rises except in a few cases like the Forbidden City in Beijing.