Main entry:

Brumfield, William Craft, 1944- author, photographer.

Title & Author:

From forest to steppe : the Russian art of building in wood / text and photographs by William Craft Brumfield.

Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2025.
©2025

Description:

421 pages : color illustrations ; 32 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 411-412) and indexes.
Introduction. Getting there -- Wooden architecture as cultural environment. From palace to dacha : high art revisits folk traditions -- The wooden ambience of Russian literature -- Where the folk live : from forest to steppe. The Russian north : toward the White Sea -- The heartland -- Crossing the Urals -- Into Siberia -- The far east -- Conclusion. What will remain?

Summary:

"Throughout Russian history, local craftsmen have shown remarkable skill in fashioning wood into items of daily use, from bridges and street paving to carts and boats to household utensils and combs. Russia has the largest forested zone on the planet, so its architecture was also traditionally made from timber. From homes to churches to forts, Russian buildings are almost all, underneath, constructed with logs, often covered by plank siding or by lathing and plaster. In From Forest to Steppe, renowned scholar and photographer William Craft Brumfield offers a panoramic survey of Russia's centuries-long heritage of wooden architecture. Lavishly illustrated with nearly 400 color photographs, the volume links log-built barns, windmills, houses, and churches in the Far North; Buddhist shrines in the Transbaikal region; and eighteenth-century palaces on the outskirts of Moscow. Brumfield also takes readers to the estate houses of many of Russia's literary giants, from Chekhov and Tolstoy to Dostoevsky and Pushkin. Spanning thousands of photographed sites, five decades of field work, and seven time zones, Brumfield's photographs offer compelling evidence of the adaptability of log construction and its ability to transcend class, cultural, and aesthetic boundaries. In the decades since Brumfield began photographing Russian architecture, many of the buildings he has documented have been demolished, abandoned, and left to rot at alarming rates. Brumfield observes a contradiction in contemporary Russia: it acknowledges the cultural importance of wooden buildings yet struggles to find and dedicate the resources and solutions needed to save them. A hymn and elegy to the long Russian practice of building with wood, From Forest to Steppe is an unparalleled look into one of the world's most singular architectural traditions."-- Provided by publisher.

ISBN:

9781478028246 hardcover
1478028246 hardcover
electronic book
9781478060451

Subject:

Building, Wooden Russia (Federation) History.
Architecture Russia (Federation) History.
Vernacular architecture Russia (Federation) History.
Building, Wooden Russia (Federation) Pictorial works.
Architecture Russia (Federation) Pictorial works.
Vernacular architecture Russia (Federation) Pictorial works.
Architecture Russia History.
Construction en bois Russie Histoire.
Architecture Russie Histoire.
Architecture vernaculaire Russie Histoire.
Construction en bois Russie Ouvrages illustrés.
Architecture vernaculaire Russie Ouvrages illustrés.
ARCHITECTURE / General.
Architecture History.
Architecture
Building, Wooden History.
Building, Wooden
Vernacular architecture History.
Vernacular architecture
Russia (Federation)

Form/genre:

Pictorial works.
Illustrated works.
Ouvrages illustrés.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 327917
Call No.: 327917
Copy: 1
Status: Available