Introduction: Objects in Motion in the Early Modern World

2009

This paper analyzes a group of rose engine lathe-turned ivory works from the original Qing court collection, which were previously unknown to museum curators and scholars. The transcultural messages carried by the lathe-turned ivory works and the role that lathe turning machinery in the Qing court played in artistic exchanges and in disseminating technical knowledge between eighteenth-century Europe and China are significant. The recent publication of the Imperial Household archives has made this research possible, and it has been the author’s privilege to work with the National Palace Museum’s digital archive of the collection and with colleagues in the Palace Museum, Beijing, to identify similar works in storage. The turned ivory works by European rose engine lathe in the eighteenth-century Qing court is an interesting and solid case study for the discussion of communication between the East and the West. This paper evaluates imperial archive documents, ivory art works made by European rose engine lathes in the imperial workshops, and the relevant practical techniques brought to the Qing court, to discuss the exchange of art and craftsmanship techniques between the East and the West during the period.

2018

During the reign of Emperor Huan (147-67) of the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) a family of merely local renown invested 'everything they had' in the construction of four decorated offering shrines for recently deceased men of the clan. According to inscriptions at the shrines, some of these men had held minor offices; others had devoted themselves to the study of the Confucian classics. They were typical of that class of scholars, officials and aspiring officials who were both the product and the mainstay of the Han imperial bureaucracy, the same bureaucracy that, some two centuries earlier, had displaced the hereditary military aristocracy characteristic of pre-Han society. 1 Today the Wu family enjoys something more than local renown, and all because of their decorated shrines, which have received the attentions of scholars for almost a thousand years. This venerable historiography may account for the fact that the shrines have been mentioned more frequently than most monuments in comparisons between Han and pre-Han times. Generally speaking these comparisons have not focused upon the social differences between petty lords and aspiring bureaucrats, but have emphasized instead the abandonment of the 'stylized' forms of pre-imperial vessel decor in favor of more 'realistic' modes of representation in Han times. 2 There is a difficulty with this comparison. Although more representational than the cauldron decor of the ancient kings, the pictures displayed at these shrines are far from what we would call 'realistic'. This discrepancy has given rise to much speculation concerning the style of the Wu Shrines engravings. The date, location, and function of the shrines have all been cited to explain the oddities of their style. Amidst this wealth of scholarship, no more than a few lines have been written of the patronage of these monuments, yet it may well be in its patronage that the art of the Han contrasts more sharply with the art of pre-imperial China. In 1948 it was suggested that the didactic and political character of many Han reliefs was due to the influence of the state controlled art production apparatus of the Han empire. The histories tell us that lacquerwares, mirrors and

2017

Ancient Chinese ceramics are objects of appreciation around the world and have been defined as works of art by the art world. My thesis, however, points out that the taken-forgranted idea that ceramics are born to be works of art in ancient China, is, in fact, a constructed interpretation. In the thesis, I ask the question: when and how were ceramics transformed from functional objects into works of art in ancient China? The thesis investigates the change of roles and imperial tastes of ceramics during the Tang-Song transition, and examines the formation of a new aesthetics of ceramics, combining two aesthetic concepts: unadorned naturalness and antiquarianism, under Emperor Huizong of the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127). Ru ware, the imperial ceramics cherished by Huizong, was produced after the new ceramic aesthetics. Through examining the life of Ru ware in relation to Song dynasty literati culture and court rituals, the thesis proposes that Emperor Huizong developed the new cer...

Amsterdam University Press, 2021

This volume brings the studies of institutions, labour, and material cultures to bear on the history of science and technology by tracing the workings of the Imperial Household Department (Neiwufu) in the Qing court and empire. An enormous apparatus that employed 22,000 men and women at its heyday, the Department operated a "machine" with myriad moving parts. The first part of the book portrays the people who kept it running, from technical experts to menial servants, and scrutinises the paper trails they left behind. Part two uncovers the working principles of the machine by following the production chains of some of its most splendid products: gilded statues, jade, porcelain, and textiles. Part three tackles the most complex task of all, managing living organisms in nature, including lotus plants grown in imperial ponds in Beijing, fresh medicines sourced from disparate regions, and tribute elephants from Southeast Asia. (the e-book is available as Open Access) Keywords: interior decoration, refurbishing, servants, imperial family, bannermen careers, accounting, embroidery, imperial birthday, porcelain, fire gilding, transportation, jade, Xinjiang, classification of objects, lotus, Westpark, medicine supply, elephants ... Stable JSTOR link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1tfw0z6

Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal histories and transnational networks2021, 2021

Cover illustration: Nicolas Bion, Globe terrestre sur lequel les principaux points sont placés sur les […] observations […] de l'Académie royale des Sciences, c.1694, engraving. Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France. Public domain.

Burlington Magazine, 2020

Arts Asiatiques, 2017

En 1790, une extraordinaire pierre à encre (yanshan) en forme de main refit surface à Pékin, attirant la curiosité des antiquaires locaux. Sa forme était aussi exceptionnelle que sa provenance : conçue pour Li Yu (937-978), elle avait fait partie des trésors de la collection légendaire de Mi Fu (1051-1107. Weng Fanggang (1738-1818) l'a alors étudiée de près et a partagé ses découvertes dans un essai écrit sur un long rouleau où se trouvent également quatre représentations de la pierre : deux peintures et deux estampages. Guidé par le nouveau principe de l'objectivité, Weng a mis à l'épreuve tous les récits apocryphes relatifs à l'histoire et aux propriétés de la pierre, en les confrontant aux nouvelles preuves empiriques. Pourquoi présenter ce matériel sur une peinture ? Cet article présente les efforts déployés par Weng Fanggang et ses artistes pour capturer l'image la plus authentique de la pierre, exposant comment la rigueur académique est devenue inséparable de l'imagination artistique dans la quête du passé propre à la fin du xviii e siècle.

is a work of superb scholarship. The outcome of two workshops held at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin in 2015, the book incorporates research by fifteen scholars working across a wide range of disciplines. Although the book concentrates on the Qing palace, this topic is not addressed through the more traditional lenses of architecture and interior furnishings or the emperor and his entourage. Instead, the focus of the investigation is the Imperial Household Department (Neiwufu 內務府), the Manchu institution initiated under Kangxi that managed all aspects of the palace's inner workings. To this end, the volume addresses fundamental issues, generally overlooked in scholarship, regarding how the palace-conceptualized as a "machine"-operated on a logistical level. The book's methodical organization echoes the bureaucratic structure of the palace machine. The book has three parts, along with an introduction and conclusion co-written by the editors. Each part consists of a brief introduction, a short "vignette" essay and three full-length essays. Part One, "Operating the Machine: Personnel and Paper Trails," focuses on the "basic operating principles of the palace machine" (32), including discussions of who worked there, what roles they undertook, and how the movements of people and things were tracked. Part Two, "Producing the Court: Materials and Artifacts," examines "three categories of material artifacts that contributed to the visual and cultural splendor of the Qing court," porcelain, jade, and gilded roofs and Buddhist statues (33). Part Three, "Mobilizing Nature: Plants and Animals," examines how the "less predictable components," including lotus plants, medicinal herbs, and elephants, "were incorporated into [the palace's] workings" (33). Each essay begins with a brief summary of its content and ends with a short biography of the author(s), which adds an appealing personal dimension. The book's supplementary materials are well conceived. They include helpful tables of the chronology of China's dynasties and periods, and a list of Qing weights, measures, and currencies. Three specially produced ground plans of the Qing palace and