The Craft & Art of Bamboo: 30 Elegant Projects to make for Home and Garden [Hardcover]

Carol Stangler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2001

The hottest material around for gardens and home décor also is one with a rich and ancient history: bamboo. Long used in both Eastern and Western cultures, it looks graceful and brings a touch of nature to any space. From harvesting to assembling projects, this photo-filled introduction to bamboo fundamentals gives advice on preparing and buying, tips on drying and weathering, hints on preventing and dealing with insect damage, and instructions for cleaning the bamboo. Follow the directions on cutting, splitting, joining, attaching, bending, flattening, finishing, and preserving. Construct lovely fences, gates, railings, screens, furnishings, accessories, and more for landscape, garden, and home. Picture a curved bamboo handrail along a walkway, a low trellis for climbing plants, a charming porch swing, a simple Japanese flower container, even an outdoor shower stall. Lush photography and abundant illustrations make this easy to use...and a treat for the eyes.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Bamboo is a ubiquitous craft and construction material in Asia, but it has never replaced wood as a material of choice in North America, the home of only one native species. It is increasingly being used for garden structures, however, and the projects in this book reflect that trend. There are step-by-step instructions for trellises and fences as well as small pieces of furniture and table items all well designed in the oriental style. Information on growing, harvesting, and working with bamboo is also included. Few books are available on this topic, so this should be welcome in all garden and crafts collections.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Long considered a food fit for exotic species such as koalas and pandas, bamboo literally comes out of the closet here to act as a bonafide home-furnishings material, which means that this graceful pole morphs into both indoor and outdoor accessories, from sushi trays and door mats to the low-curved Nanako garden border and an al fresco shower stall. Environmental artist Stangler does her best work in, first, expressing virtues and properties of this grass-family member, then to laying out in detail the instructions for 30 projects. The book's mood is at one with nature: a loose flowing text around color photographs, supported by black-and-white illustrations, step-by-step how-tos, and boxed commentaries on the nitty-gritties, such as a cutting list and metric equivalents, in addition to materials and tools needed. Enhancing the Zen mood are the informational sidebars--a chart, for instance, of the 11 varieties of poles for purchase as well as a full page on the giant clumping iron bamboo. Barbara Jacobs
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Lark Books (December 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579901913
• ISBN-13: 978-1579901912
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 9.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #348,447 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Craft & Art of Bamboo, November 5, 2001

By 

Nancy Bess (Amherst, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Craft & Art of Bamboo: 30 Elegant Projects to make for Home and Garden (Hardcover)

Anyone who is interested in bamboo will want The Craft & Art of Bamboo by Carol Stangler readily at hand! She looked North and South, East and West for her resources and inspirations. And she knew who to include, some of the greats in the field of working with bamboo -- among them, David Flanagan (the Bamboo Fencer), Yucatan Bamboo, and Doug Lingen and Reed Hamilton of the Bamboosmiths. The reader may not need or be attracted to each project (with 30 in all, she offers a BIG range to choose from!), but there is a great deal of information to be gleaned from each one. The chapters on harvesting and tools alone are sufficiently full of information to make the very reasonable purchase price worthwhile. This would be a great gift, for yourself or for any woodworker-crafter.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I returned it, January 3, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Craft & Art of Bamboo: 30 Elegant Projects to make for Home and Garden (Hardcover)

This may be the only book I ever returned. There are plenty of projects in the book, but I found only one, an occasional table, attractive enough to even consider building (well, there was a coffee table that was OK too). I really like Asian furniture and thought there might be some nice plans in this vein (it is a bamboo book!), but there aren't. I was a little disappointed.

The information on cutting, bending, and flattening bamboo is worthwhile, but I bet it was only 20 pages or so; the the rest of the book is dedicated the various projects, many of them garden/outdoors.

Overall a decent book if you've never worked with bamboo - it'll get you started - but try to leaf through it beforehand to check out the projects if you're looking for furniture plans.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good intro to what you can do with bamboo, March 12, 2006

By 

Esther Schindler (Scottsdale, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Craft & Art of Bamboo: Projects for Home and Garden (Paperback)

I took this book out of the library purely out of curiousity. We're doing a lot of home improvements, and our once-indoor pot of bamboo got big enough that it had to be moved into the atrium. Since bamboo is a renewable resource... hey, how could we put it all to use?

The Craft & Art of Bamboo is subtitled "30 elegant projects to make for home and garden" but it provides a little more than I expected. If you haven't worked with bamboo before (and I certainly haven't), two of it chapters (harvesting, purchasing and preparing bamboo; and tools, materials, and techniques) probably make this worth the purchase price.

Most of the projects are small scale, geared for beginners who just want to complete something in a weekend -- a bamboo doormat, sushi trays, teppo screen -- though there are a few big projects, such as coffee tables and fences. If you're a purist, you'll be offended by the author's use of drywall screws rather than cordage, but he does talk quite a bit about lashing and show the traditional ties, complete with illustrations and a photo of the result.

If I were serious about "woodworking" with bamboo, this probably wouldn't be the only book I acquired. Because of the tools and materials section, it would, however, be one I'd enjoy having in my library.