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From Forest to Steppe: The Russian Art of Building in Wood
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 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.
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 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.
- GenresPhotography
440 pages, Hardcover
Published July 1, 2025
6 people want to read
About the author
William Craft Brumfield
27 books7 followersWilliam Craft Brumfield is Professor of Slavic Studies at Tulane University. Brumfield, who began photographing Russia in 1970, is the foremost authority in the West on Russian architecture. He is the author, editor, and photographer of numerous books, including Lost Russia: Photographing the Ruins of Russian Architecture, also published by Duke University Press. Brumfield is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and was a Fellow at the National Humanities Center. In 2002 he was elected to the State Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences, and in 2006 he was elected to the Russian Academy of Fine Arts. He is also the 2014 recipient of the D. S. Likhachev Prize for Outstanding Contributions to the Preservation of the Cultural Heritage of Russia. Brumfield's photographs of Russian architecture have been exhibited at numerous galleries and museums and are part of the Image Collections at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 9, 2025
A living atlas of Russia in wood
William Craft Brumfield gives us a love letter to wooden architecture and a field diary from five decades on the road. The scope is continental, the voice personal. He travels from Rostov-on-Don to Norilsk, dates every photograph, and lets the images carry the argument. Many structures have already vanished. The captions become rescue lines tossed back through time.
The design is simple and effective. Part 1 shows wood at the heights of culture, from palaces and dachas to urban sleights that disguise logs as masonry. Part 2 walks the long road, north to heartland, over the Urals, through Siberia, and to the Far East. We meet Tomsk’s flamboyant merchant mansions, Buddhist shrines in Transbaikalia, and the last echoes of Indigenous log forms. The scholarship is clear-eyed and lightly worn. He accepts the romance of a “wooden Russia,” then shows the real drivers behind loss, from fire risk to economics, without turning the prose into a funeral dirge.
Two moments deserve special notice. First, the extraordinary full spread of the “Omsk Madonna” on pages 334 and 335, a soul-searing portrait that holds dignity and poverty in a single steady gaze. It feels like the Russian countryside answering Walker Evans. Photography at that level makes the whole project snap into focus. Second, keep an eye out after the index. There is a small lagniappe tucked just beyond the official end, a joyful wink that rewards readers who do not leave the theater during the credits.
Brumfield is a humane guide. He thanks the drivers who got him through axle eating mud and the curators who opened doors. He tells small, exact stories, like a midnight train hall brightened by a toy that plays “Ode to Joy,” or a stampede of mosquitoes that turn a scholar into a sprinter. These scenes never steal the show. They explain why the show exists.
The photographs are the argument. Color is used for clarity, not flash. Details of joinery, foundations, and finish are rendered without pedantry. When a caption records that a church burned or a house was razed, the page becomes evidence. Architects will see a master class in climate and material. Historians will see social change written in log courses and plank siding. Teachers will see a course in a box.
Beautiful and indispensable. That is a hard combination. Brumfield manages it, and he leaves you with one last smile if you keep turning pages.
William Craft Brumfield gives us a love letter to wooden architecture and a field diary from five decades on the road. The scope is continental, the voice personal. He travels from Rostov-on-Don to Norilsk, dates every photograph, and lets the images carry the argument. Many structures have already vanished. The captions become rescue lines tossed back through time.
The design is simple and effective. Part 1 shows wood at the heights of culture, from palaces and dachas to urban sleights that disguise logs as masonry. Part 2 walks the long road, north to heartland, over the Urals, through Siberia, and to the Far East. We meet Tomsk’s flamboyant merchant mansions, Buddhist shrines in Transbaikalia, and the last echoes of Indigenous log forms. The scholarship is clear-eyed and lightly worn. He accepts the romance of a “wooden Russia,” then shows the real drivers behind loss, from fire risk to economics, without turning the prose into a funeral dirge.
Two moments deserve special notice. First, the extraordinary full spread of the “Omsk Madonna” on pages 334 and 335, a soul-searing portrait that holds dignity and poverty in a single steady gaze. It feels like the Russian countryside answering Walker Evans. Photography at that level makes the whole project snap into focus. Second, keep an eye out after the index. There is a small lagniappe tucked just beyond the official end, a joyful wink that rewards readers who do not leave the theater during the credits.
Brumfield is a humane guide. He thanks the drivers who got him through axle eating mud and the curators who opened doors. He tells small, exact stories, like a midnight train hall brightened by a toy that plays “Ode to Joy,” or a stampede of mosquitoes that turn a scholar into a sprinter. These scenes never steal the show. They explain why the show exists.
The photographs are the argument. Color is used for clarity, not flash. Details of joinery, foundations, and finish are rendered without pedantry. When a caption records that a church burned or a house was razed, the page becomes evidence. Architects will see a master class in climate and material. Historians will see social change written in log courses and plank siding. Teachers will see a course in a box.
Beautiful and indispensable. That is a hard combination. Brumfield manages it, and he leaves you with one last smile if you keep turning pages.
October 11, 2025
Anyone reading the current headlines should have an open copy of this extraordinary book close at hand. Beyond the luminous photographs, the text carries the reader (Slavicist or not at all) back into a world where architecture was not merely functional but often startlingly beautiful. Many of these structures appear to have been created with wild, unexpected abandon. An almost spiritual need for the creation of beauty. The heart is nourished. Some of the architects are known by name and other works, but many are not, and seeing what they, the nameless, like most of us, were inspired to create gives us a reason to hope and to go on.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews