Explore Baskets: Masterpieces Of Japanese Bamboo Art 1850-2015 Expressed By Joe Earle In Readable Copy

This book covers everything you need to know about Japanese baskets Fully comprehensive text and photography This massivepage,x" tome has images ofJapanese bamboo art from the impressive Naej collection, spanning a variety of periods and styles from classical baskets to modern sculptural works.
There is a brief introductory essay about the evolution of Japanese bamboo art, After each catalog section there are thumbnail images of the pieces and any signatures on the pieces, along with brief bios of the creators.
One might have expected that a book this size would, as is typical of exhibition catalogs, have a number of articles by different experts in the field.
However, the fundamental issue is that the graphic design leaves something to be desired, The upper margin throughout the book is strangely minimal, even in the sparsely filled titled pages which use a curiously large font.
Once into the catalog, the text in three languages has been spread out on the left and top margins, meaning that there aren't any images that don't have text nearby.
Even distracting are the unnecessarily large catalog numbers on the upper corners, As for the images, most have a dark background which shades up to total black, When a basket is not tall, rather than fitting the image to the basket, a large area of black is left above the basket.
All of which makes for a decidedly gloomy effect, Further, this means that dark baskets don't stand out clearly in particular those which are not glossy and, as a result, don't reflect the light see pic.
Further, the magnified images of parts of the pieces are larger than, and have light than, the images of the whole, The effect: when one turns the page, one's eye is drawn to the close up, and keeps being pulled away from the image of the

whole piece which also has to compete with the scattered text.
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