Product Description

Dense with winding paths, dominated by huge rock piles and buildings squeezed into small spaces, the characteristic Chinese garden is, for many foreigners, so unlike anything else as to be incomprehensible. Only on closer acquaintance does it offer up its mysteries; and such is the achievement of Maggie Keswick's celebrated classic that it affords us--adventurers, armchair travelers, and garden buffs alike--the intimate pleasures of the Chinese garden.

In these richly illustrated pages, Chinese gardens unfold as cosmic diagrams, revealing a profound and ancient view of the world and of humanity's place in it. First sensuous impressions give way to more cerebral delights, and forms conjure unending, increasingly esoteric and mystical layers of meaning for the initiate. Keswick conducts us through the art and architecture, the principles and techniques of Chinese gardens, showing us their long history as the background for a civilization--the settings for China's great poets and painters, the scenes of ribald parties and peaceful contemplation, political intrigues and family festivals.

Updated and expanded in this third edition, with an introduction by Alison Hardie, many new illustrations, and an updated list of gardens in China accessible to visitors, Keswick's engaging work remains unparalleled as an introduction to the Chinese garden.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #213065 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Review
'Miss Keswick's book, full of fascinating illustrations, is a joy.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Miss Keswick's is no ordinary garden tour, but a first-rate job of intellect, intelligently illustrated...So great is Miss Keswick's penetration of such mysteries that one feels for once at home with what might be called China's creative inscrutability.' NEW YORK TIMES

Review
After reading Maggie Keswick's sensitive study one is tempted to run off to Suzhou using The Chinese Garden as a spiritual guidebook. (Far Eastern Economic Review )

[Keswick] shows, in a complex and even exhilarating argument, how the gardens are contrived with enormous subtlety to look like accidental snatches of nature. (New York Times )

Chinese gardens are high among the wonders of Chinese art, but they do not receive the attention they deserve...The late Maggie Keswick's well-received original volume of the same title was a tour-de-force of insight, which this update enhances.
--J. O. Caswell (Choice )

Twenty-five years ago, at the prompting of her husband, Charles Jencks, British designer Maggie Keswick set about explaining to Western readers the ancient logic and symbolism of Chinese gardens. She did it with rare empathy. The only child of Sir John Keswick, chairman of a trading company with roots in the Orient going back to the Opium Wars, she had spent much of her childhood in and out of China. The Chinese Garden was so enlightening it was reissued...giving Keswick a crack at a new generation...Her introduction to this strange and beautiful world was so good, her touch so light, one could only nod, smile and turn the page for a fresh delight. (Los Angeles Times )

About the Author
Maggie Keswick was educated in Shanghai and Hong Kong and at Oxford University; she was married to the architectural critic and historian Charles Jencks, who contributed to this book.

Customer Reviews

The Garden as the Source of History and Philosophy
While the attitudes and examples of Japanese gardens abound in books and in cities around the world, very little has been written or photographs of the unique concepts found in the Chinese gardens. Maggie Keswick repairs that paucity of information with this very beautifully designed, photographed and written monograph on the spirit of the subtle beauties that abound in the Chinese garden.

Keswick offers an in depth analysis of the history of gardens in China and even if the reader is not an avid horticulturist, just the amount of information about China alone is reason to read this book carefully. But in addition to the history and the architectural elements of these gardens here considered, there are many graceful photographs and accompanying illustrations that keep pace with the narrative while providing an encouragement to return to the book purely for the art of it.

Keswick has found the middle ground in creating a volume about the elements of the Chinese garden and a volume that stands strongly as simply an art book. Highly recommended for repeated readings. Grady Harp, April 05

Acutely Perceptive, Informative, Profound
A superb study that is as engrossing as it is elegantly written and lavishly illustrated, and a sensitive inquiry into the aesthetics, the history and the philosophy that underpin an ancient and majestic civilization's view of mankinds's place within the cosmos. Both unique and profound. An essential work.

The right place to begin
I've been a garden designer in Portland Oregon for twenty years and have spent over a year in China visiting gardens . This book is a very good place to begin if you want to understand , on a basic level, Chinese gardens . It is however, not the place to stop if you really seek to understand them . To do that you have to try to understand the culture and times which produced them. Fruitful Sites by Craig Clunas is the best work which I have found so far as it analyzes the gardens at Suzhou over the course of several dynasties. Chinese Classical Gardens of Suzhou (Hardcover)
by Tun-Chen Liu, Joseph C. Wang is also a very good book . It is a critique of most of the principal gardens in Suzhou and it punctures the illusion that every Chinese garden is equally great and every feature wonderful. And if you are actually going to travel to China to see gardens you really should read both of Peter Valder's books . They will help you understand Chinese plants and to find gardens in many Chinese cities. I don't always agree with Valder's assessments . He is quite restrained at times . And if you are planning to travel to Suzhou consider visiting Tongli as well. I also consider the gardens of The Slender West Lake in Yangzhou and other gardens there to be equal to many of the gardens in Suzhou. And if you are going to go to China I recommend you start reading The Orientalist online and purchase Beijing by Peter Neville Hadley so that you will not be shocked when you travel China . It is by no means an easy process if you want to travel beyond some air-con rip-off tour.