Wabi Sabi: A New Look at Japanese Design [Hardcover]

Lennox Tierney (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Gibbs Smith Publishers (August 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879058498
• ISBN-13: 978-0879058494
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 8.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,428,941 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The lesser Wabi-Sabi, May 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Wabi Sabi: A New Look at Japanese Design (Hardcover)

How can two books with virtually the same title be so different? I bought both books that Amazon lists with "wabi" and "sabi" in the titles. The other book is highly informative, imaginative, and profoundly artful in the manner of wabi-sabi. WABI SABI: A NEW LOOK AT JAPANESE DESIGN, however, would be more accurately titled "WABI SABI LITE." It is a regurgitation of all the tired cliches about Japanese design and culture I have come to loathe rereading. Sorry. I'd let this one pass.

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A pale facsimile of the real thing, October 4, 2000

By 

A Reader from Chicago, IL - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wabi Sabi: A New Look at Japanese Design (Hardcover)

This book only skims the surface of wabi-sabi, dealing in the tired truisms of the "cherry blossoms in the spring" type and the cheap exoticism that often plagues Western writing about Japanese aesthetics.

As a student of Japanese culture, I bought this book and was very disappointed. You're not missing anything--skip it.

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars nothing special, except the dull photos, June 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Wabi Sabi: A New Look at Japanese Design (Hardcover)

This book is derivative and enraptured with cliche. The photos look like cheap snapshots gussied up for placement in a rather nice design. But the elegance of the overall production is the exact antithesis of the the REAL wabi sabi, so expertly revealed in that other book. They could have named this anything, and you wonder if the title was chosen to do anything but ride on the other author's achievement. I'd ignore this one.