Coffee Table Book of: Koi (Hardcover)

Coffee Table Book of: Koi is a large format book of ornamental koi, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: snow white and scarlet carp, tricolour red, black and white fish, jet black and white bands, solid metallic gold and platinum white koi, steel blue netted backs, scaleless mirror carp, warm russet and bronze pond leaders, and flowing long finned butterfly koi.

Every koi in the book belongs to a single domesticated carp species shaped over two centuries of careful selection to be admired from above in garden ponds and shallow viewing bowls: spindle shaped bodies built for calm gliding, single forked tails driven by thick muscular tail wrists, broad rounded pectoral fins held out like white paddles, and trailing butterfly plumes that drift like silk in still water.

Seen close are the working structures and surface finishes that set ornamental carp apart: four sensory barbels at the corners of a protrusible toothless mouth, folded scent nostrils ahead of golden rimmed eyes, branching bony rays inside a translucent tail web, giant armour scales along a mirror koi's flank, diamond bright crystal ridges, netted pinecone backs, matte chalk white and burnished metallic gold.

Around the fish sit the quiet waters they inhabit across the year: glazed ceramic viewing bowls and weathered cedar tubs on wet flagstones, sunlit waterlily ponds at dawn, deep granite pools at midday, a calm pond sealed under clear winter ice, sticky amber eggs clinging to green hornwort in spring, newly hatched larvae with yolk sacs, young fingerlings coming into their markings, and the wild olive bronze river carp from which every variety began.

Short notes run through the book, on how selection turned a humble farm pond carp into living brocade, how barbels, fins, scales, swim bladders and senses work in water, and how koi feed, school, spawn and overwinter: in black based tricolour koi, dark pigment wraps up from the belly to frame the red and white patches, long finned butterfly koi came from crossing patterned pond koi with long finned wild river carp, a thick opaque leading ray stiffens each pectoral fin so the koi can pivot its heavy body in its own length, and a koi regulates its buoyancy by gulping air at the surface and passing it into a two chambered swim bladder.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a hardcover with the art printed on the case.

Publisher - Cedar Pine Editions

Language - English

Case Bound - PPC

Contributors

By author

Dimitri Smith

Published Date - 2026-11-03

ISBN - 9671456008929

Dimensions - 27.9 x 21.6 x 1.2 cm

Page Count - 94