THE BOOK OF TEA 

The Book of Tea

Product Code: 13760 Price: Check Latest "Nearly a century ago in Boston, a small, esoteric book about tea was written with the intention of being read aloud in the salon of Isabella Gardner. ""There is a subtle charm in the taste of tea which makes it irresistible and capable of idealization,"" wrote its author Okakura Kakuzo, a Japanese philosopher and art curator later known as Tenshin, who had a genius for bridging Western and Eastern cultures. ""It has not the arrogance of wine, the self-consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of cocoa."" The Book of Tea introduced the West to the ""cult of tea"" and has been in print continuously ever since. This edition presents Okakura's delicious wisdom in a graceful, old-fashioned font on a spacious page, set off with atmospheric quadratone photographs of tea ceremony accoutrements. Liza Dalby, the first non-Japanese ever to have become a geisha, provides an introduction. Interwoven with a rich history of tea and its place in Japanese society is a poignant commentary on the abandonment of Eastern culture since the opening of Japan to the West—a loss Okakura passionately worked to recover—as well as essays on art, spirituality, and poetry. List Price: $ 19.95 Our Price: $ 9.50"