• Contact

  • Newsletter

  • About us

  • Delivery options

  • Prospero Book Market Podcast

  • News

  • From Forest to Steppe ? The Russian Art of Building in Wood: The Russian Art of Building in Wood

    From Forest to Steppe ? The Russian Art of Building in Wood by Brumfield, William Craft;

    The Russian Art of Building in Wood

      • GET 10% OFF

      • The discount is only available for 'Alert of Favourite Topics' newsletter recipients.
      • Publisher's listprice GBP 42.00
      • The price is estimated because at the time of ordering we do not know what conversion rates will apply to HUF / product currency when the book arrives. In case HUF is weaker, the price increases slightly, in case HUF is stronger, the price goes lower slightly.

        21 256 Ft (20 244 Ft + 5% VAT)
      • Discount 10% (cc. 2 126 Ft off)
      • Discounted price 19 131 Ft (18 220 Ft + 5% VAT)

    21 256 Ft

    db

    Availability

    Not yet published.

    Why don't you give exact delivery time?

    Delivery time is estimated on our previous experiences. We give estimations only, because we order from outside Hungary, and the delivery time mainly depends on how quickly the publisher supplies the book. Faster or slower deliveries both happen, but we do our best to supply as quickly as possible.

    Product details:

    • Publisher MD ? Duke University Press
    • Date of Publication 1 July 2025
    • Number of Volumes Cloth over boards

    • ISBN 9781478028246
    • Binding Hardback
    • No. of pages277 pages
    • Size 305x229x15 mm
    • Weight 572 g
    • Language English
    • Illustrations 412 color photographs, 6 maps
    • 700

    Categories

    Short description:

    In this lavishly illustrated volume that includes nearly 400 color images, renowned scholar and photographer of Russian architecture William Craft Brumfield surveys the centuries-long tradition of wood-built buildings, ranging from cabins to churches to estate homes.

    More

    Long description:

    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 more than 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 Russian 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 or 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.

    From Forest to Steppe is a tribute to the generations of anonymous Russian woodworkers whose skill and ingenuity took a simple basic module—the log cabin—and adapted its structure to dwellings large and small, from stout defensive walls and fortifications to prefab rooms for sale at medieval markets. It is also a tribute to the dedication and persistence of William Craft Brumfield, who found ways of reaching remote sites to photograph buildings that were often in a state of disrepair or that have since disappeared. Providing an expansive overview of a fundamental building block of Russian culture, this book helps us appreciate the importance of preserving architectural monuments as a window into the life of the boreal forest’s past and present inhabitants.”

    More