4An extremely important English Victorian commercial and industrial designer, Christopher Dresser (1834-1904) traveled at length in nineteenth-century Japan. His excursions resulted in this excellent introduction to Japanese arts and crafts, one of the finest and most authoritative volumes of its kind. It offers unsurpassed coverage of architecture, ornament, pottery, calligraphy, drawing, lacquerware, metalware, textiles, religious symbols and more.
Readers will find themselves immersed in a tour of many great centers of traditional Japanese culture, from Yokohama to Kobe, Kyoto to Osaka. In the course of the journey, Dresser relates in fascinating detail many aspects of Japanese life, including descriptions of Japanese dancing girls, the custom of hara-kiri, the Mikado's antiquities, the tea-drinking ceremony, Japanese vegetation, and the splendor of Japanese shrines and scenery. Over 200 exquisitely drawn illustrations add to the appeal of this classic work, an indispensable resource for art and antique collectors, arts and crafts enthusiasts, art historians, and social scientists.