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5 Responses to “The Craft & Art of Bamboo: Projects for Home and Garden”

1. Carol Sampson says:

   August 16, 2009 at 12:00 am

   The book is beautiful. Lots of great ideas & instruction. I was really looking for smaller bamboo projects & most of this book is for large items such as fences & furniture etc. Still a great book if those are the projects you’re wanting to make.
2. Richard R. Ashbaugh says:

   September 26, 2008 at 12:00 am

   This excellent publication provides detailed instructions and guidance for thirty projects for your garden and home. Highly recommended.
3. Esther Schindler says:

   March 12, 2006 at 12:00 am

   I took this book out of the library purely out of curiousity. We’re doing a lot of home improvements, and our once-indoor pot of bamboo got big enough that it had to be moved into the atrium. Since bamboo is a renewable resource… hey, how could we put it all to use?

   The Craft & Art of Bamboo is subtitled “30 elegant projects to make for home and garden” but it provides a little more than I expected. If you haven’t worked with bamboo before (and I certainly haven’t), two of it chapters (harvesting, purchasing and preparing bamboo; and tools, materials, and techniques) probably make this worth the purchase price.

   Most of the projects are small scale, geared for beginners who just want to complete something in a weekend — a bamboo doormat, sushi trays, teppo screen — though there are a few big projects, such as coffee tables and fences. If you’re a purist, you’ll be offended by the author’s use of drywall screws rather than cordage, but he does talk quite a bit about lashing and show the traditional ties, complete with illustrations and a photo of the result.

   If I were serious about “woodworking” with bamboo, this probably wouldn’t be the only book I acquired. Because of the tools and materials section, it would, however, be one I’d enjoy having in my library.
4. bayoubill says:

   July 9, 2003 at 12:00 am

   This is a “craft” book, in the debased modern American meaning of “craft”, i.e. useless, shoddy trinkets. All joinery is with drywall screws — yes you read correctly — because tying knots made the author’s hands sore. Couple thousand years of artistic and technical development down the tubes, just like that. One “project” requires no drywall screws, because it consists of splitting canes to make stakes, which you can then write “carrots” or “phlox” with a marker, and jam the stake in the ground, so you don’t forget what you planted. If you need a book to tell you this you’re such a dork no book can help! Craft and art, my eye. There is advice like this: “Multi-paneled fences, as described in this book, are built on site. Single panel screens can be constructed off-site and then installed.” What does this mean? That you can build one panel, but no more than one, off-site? Gee whiz, good thing they told me, I built all the panels in my shop but then I got the book and had to burn all but one and rebuild the rest “onsite”, cuz the book said so, duh. Why is slop like this even written? To take up room so as to disguise what it lacks. Bamboo technology has gigantic dimensions — technical, historical, and aesthetic — which I dearly hoped to see, but this is a “craft” book, i.e. the premium is on easily constructed novelties, just like most of our material culture. Drywall screws, what an insult.
5. Stacy Watson says:

   January 8, 2003 at 12:00 am

   I was given an entire truck load of bamboo and had no clue what to do with it. This book really gave me some great project ideas! Has projects for large and small bamboo… I definitely recommend this book!