Loading ...<The Story of Tea>
The Story of Tea is an impressive tour of the world of tea including history, culture, cultivation, and the associated beauty of enjoying tea. It has a comprehensive glossary of tea terms and several sweet and savory recipes using tea. Reading through The Story of Tea you will start to understand why this beverage has inspired and sustained people for two thousand years. It is a complete book about tea with striking photography and will be enjoyed by novice tea drinkers and experienced consumers alike.
About the author: Mary Lou and Robert Heiss, are veteran tea traders and owners of a specialty food store in Massachusetts. They are friends of Den and visited Den¡Çs Tea parent company in Shizuoka while researching the book. Mary and Robert were kind enough to include a short section on Den and Shirakata Denshiro Shoten, Inc in the book. They have authored two other books, Hot Drinks and Green Tea.
<The Contemporary Tea House>
The tea house is one of Japan’s most original and significant architectural forms-a small, simple space for the tea ceremony that traditionally requires a hearth, straw-mat flooring, and a low entrance. 
Modern Japanese architects have found the challenge of redefining this highly formalized and constrained idiom almost impossible to resist. The Contemporary Tea House features twenty works that reveal the way world-renowned Japanese architects approach this intriguing subject using materials as disparate as charcoal plastic, and titanium.
The participating architects are Arata Isozaki, Tadao Ando, Terunobu Fujimori, Hiroshi Hara, and Kengo Kuma.
In his introduction Fujimori gives a historical overview of the tea ceremony and the tea house that puts the modern works in context. Isozaki, Ando, and Fujimori then take a behind-the-scenes look at their works and the creative process. Hara and Kuma contributed captions and brief explanations of their pieces as well. A number of owners use their buildings as a stage for the tea ceremony, while others enjoy them as spaces for meditation and reflection. There are even some who have discovered their tea houses are an optimal place to relax with a drink or a good book.
Directed at both the general reader and the specialist, this visually stunning book explores the works of these masters of modern Japanese architecture through superb photographs and informative drawings.
About the authors: ARATA ISOZAKI was born in 1931 in Oita, and graduated from the University of Tokyo’s Architectural Faculty in 1954. He set up his own practice, Arata Isozaki & Associates, in 1963, and today is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading architects.
TADAO ANDO was born in 1941 in Osaka, and established his own office in 1969. Since 1987, he has served as a visiting professor at Yale, Columbia, and Harvard, and after serving as Professor at the University of Tokyo, he now holds the chair of Professor Emeritus.
TERUNOBU FUJIMORI was born in 1946 in Nagano. He graduated from Tohoku University’s Faculty of Engineering in 1971, and completed the Doctoral Course of Architecture at the University of Tokyo in 1978. At present, he is a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Industrial Science, where his main focus of research is architectural history and the history of technology.
<The Book of Tea>
The Book of Tea was originally published in 1906 shortly after the author, Kakuzo Okakura, arrived in America. He wrote the book in English and uses tea and chanoyu-the way of tea-to introduce Asian culture to the Western World. This book is a piece of art in itself as it contains glimpses of Asian philosophy, architecture, art and Teaism. This is a book that you can read several times and each time you will find new gems about tea and tea culture.
About the author: Kakuzo Okakura was born in Yokohama in 1862. Son of a samurai family, he was educated at Tokyo University, and later moved to Boston. In 1905, he became adviser and later assistant curator to the Chinese and Japanese Department of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He wrote The Book of Tea in 1906, in English, and it has been continually in print ever since.
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