The Lives of Chinese Objects

The Lives of Chinese Objects PDF Author: Louise Tythacott
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857452398
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the biography of a set of rare Buddhist statues from China. Their extraordinary adventures take them from the Buddhist temples of fifteenth-century Putuo – China’s most important pilgrimage island – to their seizure by a British soldier in the First Opium War in the early 1840s, and on to a starring role in the Great Exhibition of 1851. In the 1850s, they moved in and out of dealers’ and antiquarian collections, arriving in 1867 at Liverpool Museum. Here they were re-conceptualized as specimens of the ‘Mongolian race’ and, later, as examples of Oriental art. The statues escaped the bombing of the Museum during the Second World War and lived out their existence for the next sixty years, dismembered, corroding and neglected in the stores, their histories lost and origins unknown. As the curator of Asian collections at Liverpool Museum, the author became fascinated by these bronzes, and selected them for display in the Buddhism section of the World Cultures gallery. In 2005, quite by chance, the discovery of a lithograph of the figures on prominent display in the Great Exhibition enabled the remarkable lives of these statues to be reconstructed.

The Lives of Chinese Objects

The Lives of Chinese Objects PDF Author: Louise Tythacott
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857452398
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the biography of a set of rare Buddhist statues from China. Their extraordinary adventures take them from the Buddhist temples of fifteenth-century Putuo – China’s most important pilgrimage island – to their seizure by a British soldier in the First Opium War in the early 1840s, and on to a starring role in the Great Exhibition of 1851. In the 1850s, they moved in and out of dealers’ and antiquarian collections, arriving in 1867 at Liverpool Museum. Here they were re-conceptualized as specimens of the ‘Mongolian race’ and, later, as examples of Oriental art. The statues escaped the bombing of the Museum during the Second World War and lived out their existence for the next sixty years, dismembered, corroding and neglected in the stores, their histories lost and origins unknown. As the curator of Asian collections at Liverpool Museum, the author became fascinated by these bronzes, and selected them for display in the Buddhism section of the World Cultures gallery. In 2005, quite by chance, the discovery of a lithograph of the figures on prominent display in the Great Exhibition enabled the remarkable lives of these statues to be reconstructed.

The Social Lives of Chinese Objects

The Social Lives of Chinese Objects PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789004521339
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Social Lives of Chinese Objects is the first anthology of texts to apply Arjun Appadurai's well-known argument on the social life of things to the discussion of artefacts made in China.

Memory and Agency in Ancient China

Memory and Agency in Ancient China PDF Author: Francis Allard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108586414
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Get Book Here

Book Description
Memory and Agency in Ancient China offers a novel perspective on China's material culture. The volume explores the complex 'life histories' of selected objects, whose trajectories as ginle objects ('biographies') and object types ('lineages') cut across both temporal and physical space. The essays, written by a team of international scholars, analyse the objects in an effort to understand how they were shaped by the constraints of their social, political and aesthetic contexts, just as they were also guided by individual preference and capricious memory. They also demonstrate how objects were capable of effecting change. Ranging chronologically from the Neolithic to the present, and spatially from northern to southern mainland China and Taiwan, this book highlights the varied approaches that archaeologists and art historians use when attempting to reconstruct object trajectories. It also showcases the challenges they face, particularly with the unearthing of objects from archaeological contexts that, paradoxically, come to represent the earliest known point of their 'post-recovery lives'.

Chinese Art and Design

Chinese Art and Design PDF Author: Rose Kerr
Publisher: Overlook Books
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores China's past in a new way. It shows how art objects were used in Chinese culture -- in sumptuous burials, in temples, in the elegant mansions of the rich, and the splendid setting of the Imperial Court. It explains the use of porcelain, lacquer, jade, silk and precious metals in the arts of eating and drinking. Looking afresh at the taste of Chinese scholars and western collectors over the centuries, it increases our understanding of the things they loved. Based on recent indepth research into one of the world's greatest collections, this book is of value to anyone interested in knowing more about the heritage of China. The new T. T. Tsui Gallery of Chinese Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum uses some of the most beautiful and precious objects in the world to tell the story of one of its most ancient civilisations -- China! Both the gallery and this book are made possible through the generosity of Mr. T. T. Tsui. Book jacket.

Design by the Book

Design by the Book PDF Author: François Louis
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781941792100
Category : Art, Asian
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Today, China's classical antiquity is often studied through recovered artifacts, but before this practice became widespread, scholars instead reconstructed the distant past through classical texts and transmitted illustrations. Among the most important illustrated commentaries was the Sanli tu, or Illustrations to the Ritual Classics, whose origins are said to date back to the great commentator Zheng Xuan. Design by the Book, which accompanies an exhibition at Bard Graduate Center Gallery, discusses the history and cultural significance of the Sanli tu in medieval China. The Sanli tu survives in a version produced around 960 by Nie Chongyi, a professor at the court of the Later Zhou (951-960) and Northern Song (960-1127) dynasties. It is now mostly remembered--if at all--for its controversial entries and as a quaint predecessor of the more empirical antiquarian scholarship produced since the mid-eleventh century. But such criticism hides the fact that the book remained a standard resource for more than 150 years, playing a crucial role in the Song dynasty's perception of ancient ritual and construction of a Confucian state cult. Richly illustrated, Design by the Book brings renewed focus to one of China's most fascinating medieval works.

Collecting Objects / Excluding People

Collecting Objects / Excluding People PDF Author: Lenore Metrick-Chen
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438443250
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description
Combining aesthetic and political history, explores the influence of Chinese people and objects on American visual culture. In Collecting Objects / Excluding People, Lenore Metrick-Chen demonstrates an unknown impact of Chinese immigration upon nineteenth-century American art and visual culture. The American ideas of Chineseness ranged from a negative portrayal to an admiring one and these varied images had an effect on museum art collections and advertising images. They brought new ideas into American art theory, anticipating twentieth-century Modernism. Metrick-Chen shows that efforts to construct a cultural democracy led to the creation of unforeseen new categories for visual objects and unanticipated social changes. Collecting Objects / Excluding People reveals the power of images upon culture, the influence of media representation upon the lives of Chinese immigrants, and the impact of political ideology upon the definition of art itself.

The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture

The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture PDF Author: John Kieschnick
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691096766
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Get Book Here

Book Description
Buddhism had a profound effect not only on Chinese philosophy and ritual, but also on the material culture of China. Examining the impact of books, bridges, sugar, tea and the chair, amongst other things, this text looks at how attitudes to such novelties affected the history of Chinese Buddhism.

A Passion for China

A Passion for China PDF Author: Molly Hatch
Publisher: September Publishing
ISBN: 1910463345
Category : House & Home
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Get Book Here

Book Description
A Passion for China is a personal celebration of the everyday beauty of tableware. 'As we move through our daily lives, eating breakfast, sipping an afternoon cup of tea or gathering for a family dinner, the patterned ceramic objects we live with are precious witnesses to our stories. We eat from them, they warm our hands after a cold walk outdoors and we pull them out to celebrate the births, marriages and lives of our loved ones.' Acclaimed ceramicist, artist and designer Molly Hatch explores the family stories behind beloved items - the bowls and cups we have inherited or chosen with love and care - and brings the history of porcelain, potteries and patterns to life through her stunning, hand-drawn illustrations. A tribute to the rich heritage of the vintage plates, jugs and pots that make our homes our own. Please note this is a fixed-format ebook with colour images and may not be well-suited for older e-readers.

Ten Thousand Things

Ten Thousand Things PDF Author: Lothar Ledderose
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691252882
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
An incomparable look at how Chinese artists have used mass production to assemble exquisite objects from standardized parts Chinese workers in the third century BC created seven thousand life-sized terracotta soldiers to guard the tomb of the First Emperor. In the eleventh century AD, Chinese builders constructed a pagoda from as many as thirty thousand separately carved wooden pieces. As these examples show, throughout history, Chinese artisans have produced works of art in astonishing quantities, and have done so without sacrificing quality, affordability, or speed of manufacture. In this book, Lothar Ledderose takes us on a remarkable tour of Chinese art and culture to explain how artists used complex systems of mass production to assemble extraordinary objects from standardized parts or modules. He reveals how these systems have deep roots in Chinese thought and reflect characteristically Chinese modes of social organization. Combining invaluable aesthetic and cultural insights with a rich variety of illustrations, Ten Thousand Things make a profound statement about Chinese art and society.

Nordic Private Collections of Chinese Objects

Nordic Private Collections of Chinese Objects PDF Author: Minna Törmä
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781138351806
Category : Art objects, Chinese
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores the ways in which Nordic private collectors displayed their collections of Chinese objects in their homes. This leads to a reconsideration of how to define collecting and display by analyzing the difference between objects serving as decorative or collectible items, while tracing collecting and display trends of the twentieth century. Minna Törmä examines four Scandinavian collections as case studies: Kustaa Hiekka, Sophus Black, Osvald Sirén and Marie-Louise and Gunnar Didrichsen, all of whom had professional backgrounds (a jeweler, two businessmen and a scholar) and for whom collecting became a passion and an educational endeavor. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, museum studies, Chinese studies, and design history.