Chinese Domestic Furniture in Photographs and Measured Drawings (Dover Books on Furniture)

Excellent service from the seller. Very well written and illustrated.

classic, must-have book on traditional furniture

Just what I was looking for

Took some time to come but I was warned of this. Photo of poor quality. Text might be useful to a collected but I was mainly interested in the details and methods of construction. However the 4 pages of joint drawings are very good

This is a reprint of an old book; privately printed in '40s Beijing and as rare then as it is today.Until this reprint, it was much sought after and hard to find any copy of it.The content of the book is a Western connoisseur's survey of Chinese furniture. It's not a scholarly work on its history (although a brief guide is included), nor is it a "how to make" project guide. What it does show is the devoted amateur's best effort (and a fine efort it is) to catalogue the furniture he saw at the time. It's this naive (in the best sense) nature that makes the book so valuable; these are simply pieces that were available to the author. Not a commercial selection by expert or exporter, not some chronological section contrived to tell a subjective history, just those pieces available in a comparatively un-Westernised China that appealed to the author's eye.For an amateur's book of this time, the production quality was staggering. Originally produced as a cardboard portfolio with an huge 161 plates and many caligraphed pages, Dover have preserved much of the atmosphere whilst binding it into a more convenient form. Modern DTP standards means it's less impressive than it was, and it would be improved by rewriting the text to follow the relevant plates, but overall I'm happy they preserved the original character.The drawings are of good quality, and detailed enough to allow reproduction by an experienced cabinetmaker. They are not simple though ! Nor are the designs or techniques amenable to easy copying by a Westerner. As a furniture maker, I doubt if I'm going to copy more than two curved lines from this book (but what curves they are !); the styles are just too alien for me to emulate. I'm still delighted to have read the book though, and if my construction techniques haven't changed, my design draughtsmanship has certainly been influenced.Congratulations again to Dover Publications on reprinting another rare classic that deserves a wider audience. They, like Taunton, are on my list of woodwork book publishers where I'll happily buy any interesting topic they offer, sure in the knowledge that it will be well carried out.

Excelente Libro. Afortunadamente Gustav Ecke se tomo el tiempo y la paciencia de documentar diferentes muebles Chinos de la Dinastía Ming. Contiene muchas fotografías, planos medidas. Así también algo de historia.

Excellent book. The book shows in the drawings about Dovetail Clamps and their importance to furniture longevity and structure among other great joinery. Great detail drawings it was what I wanted to see in a book something to teach me how to replicate the craft.

So I'm getting into woodworking, and have always loved Chinese furniture. So this book pops up as a recommendation, and it is a pretty awesome book. It was originally printed in Beijing before the Communist revolution, so it has some pretty cool looking furniture drawings and diagrams in it. Give a brief history of Chinese furniture as well as some helpful schematics on construction which i was really interested in. Wish that they would have bigger diagrams and schematics but they are usable. I had originally got the kindle version but it was a bit too hard to read and see the details, so I got the book. Wish it was also in color, but it is a reprint from the 1940's original. Otherwise if you are interested in furniture making and woodworking, this would be a great book to have in your collection.

Ce livre est absolument incontournable, un témoignage très précieux! Recommandé pour tout amoureux des meubles chinois, founis de nombreuses photos, une introduction instructive sur les types de bois, une bibliographie, des descriptifs de montage et un lexique avec transcription en caractères chinois. Écrit en anglais.

Die Fotos sind meist flau, aber die Beschreibungen und die Detailskizzen wiegen das auf. Zum Teil aus heutiger Sicht aufwändige Machart gut erklärt!