Mirrors of Paradise: The Gardens of Fernando Caruncho [Hardcover]

Guy Cooper (Author), Gordon Taylor (Author), Dan Kiley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 18, 2000

Now back in stock, this highly sought after monograph represents the gardens and landscapes of the Spanish designer Fernando Caruncho. Renowned internationally for serene compositions based on timeless principles of natural forms and geometry, Caruncho has recently completed two landscapes in the United States, one in the rolling farmland of New Jersey and the other in Florida.

Caruncho draws inspiration from a wide spectrum of precedents—the garden-academies of ancient Greek philosophers as well as important historic gardens in Spain, Italy, France, and Japan; in Mirrors of Paradise, Caruncho discusses his design philosophy and influences in a substantial interview with the authors.

Caruncho's gardens range from small urban spaces to grand country estates, and his design trademarks include geometric grids, rolling waves of the shrub escallonia, refined and playful pavilions and gazebos, calm reflecting pools, and vistas that capitalize on the contrasts inherent in his plant palette. In their inventive and evocative fusion of the historic and contemporary, Caruncho's garden designs are masterful compositions that exemplify the formal garden for the new millennium.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Paris-based photographer Laurence Toussaint has masterfully captured the understated elegance of master designer Caruncho's Spanish gardens with images as perfectly composed as the gardens themselves. Ferns nestled along a woodland path soothe with verdant tranquility. Ochre courtyard walls explode with fiery brilliance. Birds'-eye views of expansive vistas reveal intricate designs. If Caruncho's name is relatively unknown outside his native Spain, all that is about to change with Cooper and Taylor's monograph, the first, which introduces Caruncho in an in-depth interview, and interprets his gardens, which range from imposing country estates to confined urban spaces. Caruncho's creations manifest a fascination with landscape design borne from his first love, philosophy. Influenced by the ancient Greeks, whose gardens were mystical places intended to attract the gods, Caruncho translates these grand ideals into gardens on an equally grand scale. Page by page, the viewer is drawn into Caruncho's world of serenity and harmony, grandeur and grace. And it seems as though the gods would, indeed, be pleased. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Gordon Taylor and Guy Cooper are the principals of Landscape Design Ltd. in London. They have designed gardens in Ireland, France, Spain, the United States, and throughout Great Britain; they have also written numerous articles and books on herbs, gardens and garden history, including Paradise Transformed: The Private Garden for the Twenty-First Century.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: The Monacelli Press (December 18, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580930719
• ISBN-13: 978-1580930710
• Product Dimensions: 11.8 x 0.8 x 9.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #315,886 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Study Of Landscape As A Facet Of The Imagination, August 14, 2001

By 

Dr Lawrence Hauser (NYC, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mirrors of Paradise: The Gardens of Fernando Caruncho (Hardcover)

Mirrors of Paradise is a truly inspired presentation of a diverse sampling of Fernando Caruncho's architectural genius writ large on the landscape. A highly imaginative gardener by disposition, Caruncho possesses an idiosyncratic eye for wrinkles in the formal geometry of what is usually mundane. And the capacity to ingeniously comment on what he observes through design innovations which exhibit both wit and poignancy. To take but one example of this phenomena, in the Ollauri Garden which was designed in the mid nineteen-eighties, where a traditional water jet might be placed in the middle of numerous individual fountains making up a large flat reflecting pool, Caruncho plants single tall cypress trees in stone troughs. What a revelation this transformation of the ordinary creates! Such touches of imaginative whimsy permeate this man's work. But it is not caprice for its own sake. Every action is deliberate and conveys meaning. Every formal element tells a story. Mirrors Of Paradise is exceptionally well-designed, well-written, and contains a wealth of photographic images that do great justice to a man's work which is visually stunning, intellectually sophisticated and imaginatively pure.