forestofglory

Extraordinarily late but I had been reading this (super slowly.. it's denser than I expected) and thought I'd still share my responses as I go along!

My major takeaway from the chapter overall was that the imperial/literati tastes regarding inkstones are a reflection of the political context. Court inkstones appeared the way they did because of the way that imperial craftsman were trained and recruited at the time (a mix of people trained in-house, and master craftsman recruited from the outside) and because of the drive of the Emperor to have marketable branding and good PR (basically). Meanwhile, most literati were apparently totally unaffected, in terms of personal taste and opinion of inkstones, by imperial output. This seems to imply that despite the Emperors' efforts to be viewed as fellow scholars by the literati, they weren't viewed as real authorities on scholarly matters (like what stones make good inkstones and how inkstones should be stored). Although Manchus ruled the country, they failed to dictate its culture.

Liu Yuan was definitely The character of the chapter for me; he seems like an extreme guy and was entertaining to read about. I also thought the commentary about him being womanly was interesting (insight about gender roles at the time). The bit where the Emperor gifts him calligraphy, and Liu Yuan reacts by building a pavilion to house said calligraphy and then crafted an intricate, symbolically-rich ink cake depicting said calligraphy and said pavilion, killed me. His art also was awesome-- loved that ink cake, and his Luminous Dragons inkstone easily stands out the most to me so far. I love that kind of grandiose ornate object so it definitely appealed to me more than the more "chic" design of later ones.

Yongzheng, besides being probably the most objectively important character of the chapter and representing a lot of the dynamics between the court and society, stood out a lot to me because of how much of a familiar figure he was, like in terms of his personality and attitude. He really reminded me of Steve Jobs, which I was not expecting. The uncompromising vision... the fact that he couldn't actually blueprint everything himself and had to work by reacting to the difficult labor of his helpless subjects... the obsession with presentation and elegance..... the need to make his mark and stand out from his competitors with an identifiable brand... the demand that all of this be scalable such that it could be produced with a codified workflow... it's all there!

Tangential sparks of interest I had from this chapter: women's interaction with scholarship (I know men are the scholars, but my understanding is women of high standing women should also be able to write and paint; is this correct and if so, are there any differences in what inkstones would be appropriate to gift them?); non-inkstone reaction by literati to courtly tastes in matter of scholarship (Songhua stones didn't take hold, but what about painting styles, poetry, other elements of design?).