Garden Tools Hardcover - 1996

Garden tools are inseparable from gardens, and yet, while the history of gardens has been exhaustively explored, the story of garden tools has been virtually ignored - until now. As authors Suzanne Slesin and Guillaume Pellerin reveal in this lushly designed and nostalgia-filled volume, embedded in these familiar, everyday tools is a rich history that documents the tastes and passions of gardeners through the ages. Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs of garden tools, as well as with vintage lithographs, engravings, posters, ads, and even decorative plates depicting garden implements, the book follows the gardening cycle, from "Preparing the Earth" to "Harvesting", and each chapter features the traditional tools used in that phase of gardening. The "Sowing" chapter, for instance, presents an array of dibbers, trowels, seeders, and terra-cotta pots, while the "Pruning" chapter offers a host of knives, grafters, pincers, saws, scythes, hatchets, billhooks, and a mind-boggling variety of pruners. Today, vintage garden tools are being rediscovered and appreciated anew as much for their ingeniousness as for their sculptural and timeless form. Garden Tools casts these humble objects in a whole new light, and anyone who loves to dig a spade into the earth or prune a rosebush will find the book irresistibly compelling.