Leonard Koren, trained as an artist and architect, writes books about design and aesthetics.
“Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect,impermanent, and incomplete.
It is a beauty of things modest and humble.
It is a beauty of things unconventional.
The extinction of a beauty. The immediate catalyst for this book was a widely publicized tea event in Japan. The Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi has long been associated with the tea ceremony, and this event promised to be a profound wabi-sabi experience. Hiroshi Teshi- gahara, the hereditary iemoto (grand master) of the Sogetsu school of flower arranging, had commissioned three of Japan’s most famous and fashionable architects to design and build their conceptions of ceremonial tea-drinking environments. Teshigahara in addition would provide a fourth design.’ After a three-plus- hour train and bus ride from my office in Tokyo, I arrived at the event site, the grounds of an old imperial summer residence. To my dismay I found a celebration of gorgeousness, grandeur, and elegant play, but hardly a trace of wabi-sabi…”