Contemporary Chinese Art and Crafts Spectacle (Part 2)

Author: Fanqi Gongong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-01
Features: This book is a reference work on traditional Chinese handicrafts, covering 679 entries across 73 categories, totaling over 800,000 words. An overview is provided before each category, summarizing historical origins, craft techniques, product types, stylistic features, and raw materials. The introductions to specific handicrafts analyze their inheritance across different periods, artistic characteristics and styles of representative works, and the evolution and innovation of craft techniques, enabling readers to understand the origins, development, and transformations of various Chinese handicrafts. Chinese handicrafts have a long, profound, and diverse history, which has made the compilation of this book challenging. The following points outline the relevant details:
1. The boundaries between different types of Chinese handicrafts are not always clear. Classification methods vary, including by material, size, technique, or purpose. Some categories in this book still require further exploration.
2. The book generally uses legal metric units, but some traditional handicraft industries still follow non-legal units like "chi" (feet) and "liang" (ounces).
3. The book primarily uses the Common Era (CE) system for dates, but approximate periods like "late Qing Dynasty" and "early Republic of China" are retained for consistency.
4. Due to limited information, some entries are lengthy, while others may appear insufficient due to brevity.
5. China's administrative divisions change frequently, and factory names evolve even more rapidly. Despite extensive verification, some errors may remain. Given the vast variety of Chinese handicrafts, only the more renowned ones are included in this book. Therefore, although the title is A Grand View of Contemporary Chinese Handicrafts, it still falls short of fully capturing the breadth of the subject.