Leonard Koren Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 1994.
Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers
Reviewed by William Will
“Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional.”
So begins the introduction to this singular and essential book about the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi. Long associated with the Japanese tea ceremony, only few writers have tried to give a perspective on this complex term that describes the sensibility for many aesthetic decisions made in the design and selection of materials for the tea ceremony – ranging from tea utensils, to flower arrangements, to the mood and spatial qualities of tea huts and the gardens that contain them.
Leonard Koren engages us with his views as an artist informed by many years of living with and observing all things Japanese. The book itself is an illustration of the wabi-sabi aesthetic: the careful choice of the paper, the binding, the type-setting and photographs throughout the text convey the essence of what the author is writing about.
For those that have a sense of the unique beauty and quality of the Japanese crafts, architecture and gardens, but have never been able to quite put their finger on the underlying aesthetic, this book creates a context for understanding and further discovery.
