There are few things more captivating than a new world being unfolded to you by an expert in their field, and Wood and Wood Joints by Klaus Zwerger is exactly that. The book, now in its second edition, explores the history of carpentry in buildings with a focus on joinery and it is as comprehensive as it is accessible.
Wood and Wood Joints is a particularly logical book; the layout is designed to illuminate and avoid confusion. It is divided into the sections ‘The Material’, ‘Working with Wood’, ‘Types and Functions of Wood Joints’, ‘Wood Joints and their Evolution’, ‘Wood Joints as an Expression of Artistic Values’ and ‘Structural Timber Construction in China’, and traces joinery’s history in two very different parts of the world. The book focuses on the differences in how carpentry traditions tackle constructing buildings from wood.
Zwerger travelled throughout Europe, Japan and China to provide this window into the past, examining wood construction from log cabins in Norway and English cathedrals to Japanese Shinto temples and the palaces of Chinese emperors. Wood construction pervades throughout the world even today and the history of how we arrived at the methods used to create buildings that remain solid and still stand is fascinating.
The book contains an enormous amount of detail, with photographs taken by Zwerger of existing buildings that showcase this history accompanied by concise diagrams to illustrate the technique in joinery. While some detail is obscured in the uniformly black-and-white photography, the diagrams are very intuitive and easy to grasp. Developments in beams, posts, columns and walls are tracked over centuries with the increasingly sophisticated joints of mortise and tenon explained in simple language so that the most uninitiated reader can walk away with a solid grounding.
Japanese and Western architecture are compared side by side throughout the book, examining the differing solutions arrived at for similar problems, and the section on Chinese architecture is an addition for this second edition of Wood and Wood Joints. The value of this section is immediately apparent as it informs a great deal of the Japanese architecture, due to large Chinese influences on technology and design in Japan.
There is perhaps slightly more emphasis and attention paid to Japanese techniques by Zwerger, and his admiration for the craftsmanship shown by Japanese carpenters is plain to see, but Western examples and techniques are not stinted on and the contrast between the two traditions of carpentry is at the core of what makes this book such a fascinating and, dare I say it for a book on architectural history, a compelling read. Zwerger brings a history to life that in another book might be a dry and listless subject but here is immersive.
While the focus of Wood and Wood Joints is on buildings from the past, in many cases the distant past, and not on current construction methods or materials, Zwerger is not wasting his time describing these old techniques. Concrete and steel dominated construction has a far larger effect on the environment than wood construction, and more and larger buildings are using wood as a preferred structural material. The answers that were found in the building of the Ise-Jingu or the Dule si Guanyin did not rely on steel connectors, laminated timber or adhesive products. Drawing from the expertise of past generations might inspire today’s architects to take old techniques in new directions, and the return to wood as a structural material might be necessary as the carbon content of the atmosphere continues to rise.
Wood and Wood Joints is a beautiful book that deserves pride of place on any bookshelf. It is designed as well as any of the architectural marvels that it describes, it is written with the same care taken by the architects that it celebrates and it provides insight into a part of architectural history that has been fading from the modern world. Zwerger writes about a technical subject for the non-technically experienced reader and he writes very well. Wood and Wood Joints is an important resource for carpentry and a really great read.