Product Description

This is a newly revised and updated edition of this award-winning guide to the arts of China. The book explains why chinese silks and porcelains, unsurpassed for over a thousand years, have been prized around the world for their fine textures and brilliant colours. Paradoxically, the arts valued most in China have been calligraphy, ink painting, jade carving and bronze casting. The authors explain why, describing the origins of these diverse achievements and setting them in their historical context alongside decorative arts such as lacquer, cloisonné and glass. The wealth of illustrations include well-known blue-and-white Ming ceramics as well as less familiar jades of the Neolithic period and exquisite paintings on silk from the Buddhist Silk Road caves at Dunhuang.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #179259 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 396 pages

Review
"'The most lucid and authoritative introduction to Chinese culture available in English' National Art Book prize winner 'Sumptuous but affordable' New Statesman and Society"

About the Author
Combining the experience and expertise of past and present curatorial staff responsible for the Chinese collections in the British Museum's Department of Asia, the authors are the former Keeper Jessica Rawson (editor), now Warden of Merton College and co-author of the China: Three Emperors exhibition catalogue, and Anne Farrer, Jane Portal, Shelagh Vainker, Carol Michaelson and Mary Ginsberg.