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Martin Wood

    Nancy Lancaster
    Shizuka
    • Shizuka

      • 364pages
      • 13 heures de lecture

      Shizuka tells of four generations of Japanese and Japanese-Americans and their lives in the great Central Valley of California. A chance meeting between Martin, a middle-aged Caucasian, and Pat, a young Japanese-American woman who knows little about the life of her pioneer ancestors, leads by mutual impulse into the wilderness of the Sierra Nevadas to a greatly revered but little-known, century-old gathering place for early Japanese settlers, Pat's ancestors. This is Shizuka. Austere and imposing, Shizuka ("a place of tranquility") comes to life with the discovery of diaries, written in Japanese and dating from the 1890s. They describe a tight knit, dynamic family with close ties to early Yankee and Mexican settlers, yet the cryptic entries can do no more than whet the imagination. It is only the unfolding story of Kazuo Kono, the family's patriarch, that tells the true tale of Shizuka and of those who built it against great odds and were able, from time to time, to find tranquility there. Kazuo's origins in Meiji Restoration Japan, his immigration eastward to America, his establishing a family with Motome, his brilliant and passionate wife, and his agriculturally important contributions to his adopted country give warmth and texture to a virtually forgotten era and its obscure heroes.

      Shizuka
    • Nancy Lancaster

      English Country House Style

      • 200pages
      • 7 heures de lecture
      4,1(49)Évaluer

      Nancy Lancaster, who was born in 1897 into a wealthy Virginian family, became one of the greatest influences on interior decoration and garden design in Great Britain and America in the second half of the 20th century. She created what is known today as the 'English Country House Style' – a mixture of faded colors, chintzes and painted and antique furniture. In the garden, she worked in a formal yet romantic neo-Georgian style, which is still a strong spirit in British garden design. This book examines Nancy's contribution to the arts of interior decoration and garden design by chronicling her own homes and gardens –and her extraordinary life. Mirador, her family's Virginian country house, was to remain her key inspiration throughout her life. Nancy herself, her houses, her gardens and her friends are shown in an intriguing collection of photographs by distinguished photographers of the era, including Horst and Cecil Beaton.

      Nancy Lancaster