Bronze Mirrors in Ancient China
Bronze Mirrors in Ancient China

Author: Associate Professor of History Kin Sum Li

Publisher:

Published: 2024-11-21

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780295752907

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Examines mass production in antiquity Highly decorated mirrors are widely sought by museums with collections of Chinese art and are the most actively exchanged items in the art market of ancient Chinese bronzes. Featuring intricate designs that draw from those observable on woven bamboo, textiles, jade, and lacquered and painted objects of their time, these mirrors display intricate artistry. Motifs such as dragons, birds, and monsters interplay with layered decorative patterns. Most of what we know of these mirrors comes from their discovery in recent decades in tombs dating to early China. Despite their importance, this is the first book-length, scholarly study of Chinese bronze mirrors. Through research based on close examination and comparison of extant examples, Kin Sum Li offers a detailed analysis of how mirrors were designed and produced during the period from 500 to 200 BCE. He documents evidence of an emphasis on efficiency and division of labor in the production process that permitted artisans to apply expertise accumulated from long-term training and professional practice. Improvements in the production process eventually changed how mirror models and molds were prepared, as compared to earlier freehand carving. Collectively, mirror producers laid the foundations of a large commercial exchange network. Bronze Mirrors in Ancient China will be of interest to art historians, archaeologists, museum curators, art dealers, mirror collectors, and auction houses.

Metalworking in Bronze Age China
Metalworking in Bronze Age China

Author: Peng Peng

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781604979626

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"This is the first study that adopts a comprehensive, thorough, and interdisciplinary approach toward early Chinese lost-wax castings. With more than 80 images, this book provides a study on the "norms," which are seldom questioned. By examining the reasons why Chinese founders often chose not to use the lost-wax process they had clearly mastered, the book refutes the idea that lost-wax technology is the only "right way" to cast bronzes. This study demonstrates that a "norm" is in many ways an illusion that twists our comprehension of art, technology, civilization, and history"--

Imperial Illusions
Imperial Illusions

Author: Kristina Kleutghen

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2015-01-01

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 0295805528

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the Forbidden City and other palaces around Beijing, Emperor Qianlong (r. 1736-1795) surrounded himself with monumental paintings of architecture, gardens, people, and faraway places. The best artists of the imperial painting academy, including a number of European missionary painters, used Western perspectival illusionism to transform walls and ceilings with visually striking images that were also deeply meaningful to Qianlong. These unprecedented works not only offer new insights into late imperial China’s most influential emperor, but also reflect one way in which Chinese art integrated and domesticated foreign ideas. In Imperial Illusions, Kristina Kleutghen examines all known surviving examples of the Qing court phenomenon of “scenic illusion paintings” (tongjinghua), which today remain inaccessible inside the Forbidden City. Produced at the height of early modern cultural exchange between China and Europe, these works have received little scholarly attention. Richly illustrated, Imperial Illusions offers the first comprehensive investigation of the aesthetic, cultural, perceptual, and political importance of these illusionistic paintings essential to Qianlong’s world. Art History Publication Initiative. For more information, visit http://arthistorypi.org/books/imperial-illusions

Sanyan Stories
Sanyan Stories

Author:

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2015-01-01

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 0295805692

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Presented here are nine tales from the celebrated Ming dynasty Sanyan collection of vernacular stories compiled and edited by Feng Menglong (1574–1646), the most knowledgeable connoisseur of popular literature of his time in China. The stories he collected were pivotal to the development of Chinese vernacular fiction, and their importance in the Chinese literary canon and world literature has been compared to that of Boccaccio’s Decameron and the stories of One Thousand and One Nights. Peopled with scholars, emperors, ministers, generals, and a gallery of ordinary men and women in their everyday surroundings—merchants and artisans, prostitutes and courtesans, matchmakers and fortune-tellers, monks and nuns, servants and maids, thieves and imposters—the stories provide a vivid panorama of the bustling world of imperial China before the end of the Ming dynasty. The three volumes constituting the Sanyan set—Stories Old and New, Stories to Caution the World, and Stories to Awaken the World, each containing forty tales—have been translated in their entirety by Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang. The stories in this volume were selected for their popularity with American readers and their usefulness as texts in classes on Chinese and comparative literature. These unabridged translations include all the poetry that is scattered throughout the original stories, as well as Feng Menglong’s interlinear and marginal comments, which point out what seventeenth-century readers of the stories were being asked to appreciate.

Lost Knowledge
Lost Knowledge

Author: Benjamin B. Olshin

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-02-19

Total Pages: 474

ISBN-13: 9004352724

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Lost Knowledge: The Concept of Vanished Technologies and Other Human Histories examines the idea of lost knowledge, reaching back to a period between myth and history. It investigates a peculiar idea found in a number of early texts: that there were civilizations with knowledge of sophisticated technologies, and that this knowledge was obscured or destroyed over time along with the civilization that had created it. This book presents critical studies of a series of early Chinese, South Asian, and other texts that look at the idea of specific “lost” technologies, such as mechanical flight and the transmission of images. There is also an examination of why concepts of a vanished “golden age” were prevalent in so many cultures. Offering an engaging and investigative look at the propagation of history and myth in technology and culture, this book is sure to interest historians and readers from many backgrounds.

Creating the Universe
Creating the Universe

Author: Eric Huntington

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2019-01-22

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0295744073

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Winner, 2018 Edward Cameron Dimock, Jr. Prize in the Indian Humanities Buddhist representations of the cosmos across nearly two thousand years of history in Tibet, Nepal, and India show that cosmology is a rich language for the expression of diverse religious ideas, with cosmological thinking at the center of Buddhist thought, art, and practice. In Creating the Universe, Eric Huntington presents examples of visual art and architecture, primary texts, ritual ideologies, and material practices—accompanied by extensive explanatory diagrams—to reveal the immense complexity of cosmological thinking in Himalayan Buddhism. Employing comparisons across function, medium, culture, and history, he exposes cosmology as a fundamental mode of engagement with numerous aspects of religion, from preliminary lessons to the highest rituals for enlightenment. This wide-ranging work will interest scholars and students of many fields, including Buddhist studies, religious studies, art history, and area studies. Art History Publication Initiative. For more information, visit http://arthistorypi.org/books/creating-the-universe

Before Yellowstone
Before Yellowstone

Author: Douglas H. MacDonald

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2018-02-02

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0295742216

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Since 1872, visitors have flocked to Yellowstone National Park to gaze in awe at its dramatic geysers, stunning mountains, and impressive wildlife. Yet more than a century of archaeological research shows that the wild landscape has a long history of human presence. In fact, Native American people have hunted bison and bighorn sheep, fished for cutthroat trout, and gathered bitterroot and camas bulbs here for at least 11,000 years, and twenty-six tribes claim cultural association with Yellowstone today. In Before Yellowstone, Douglas MacDonald tells the story of these early people as revealed by archaeological research into nearly 2,000 sites—many of which he helped survey and excavate. He describes and explains the significance of archaeological areas such as the easy-to-visit Obsidian Cliff, where hunters obtained volcanic rock to make tools and for trade, and Yellowstone Lake, a traditional place for gathering edible plants. MacDonald helps readers understand the archaeological methods used and the limits of archaeological knowledge. From Clovis points associated with mammoth hunting to stone circles marking the sites of tipi lodges, Before Yellowstone brings to life a fascinating story of human engagement with this stunning landscape.