Yale University Art Gallery has brought together two dozen objects connected to the rich cultural history of that maritime trade for an intriguing show: Japan’s Global Baroque, 1550–1650.
Interpreting the ancient: The Portland Japanese Garden’s new Cultural Village
For me, a foretaste of the evocative new architecture at the Portland Japanese Garden came two years ago during the rice harvest season in a hamlet on the west coast of Japan.
Japanese bamboo art: A living tradition
Basket weaving is one of the most ancient of all decorative crafts. It is thought that the idea to create vessels by interweaving twigs was conceived around the same time as the idea to chip shards of flint into arrowheads. Fragments of Neolithic-age pottery reveal that long before the invention of the wheel, potters molded clay around woven basket forms, …