The Social Life of Inkstones Read Along: Chapter 1

[forestofglory]

Welcome to the second post of our read a long of The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China by Dorothy Ko! For this post we are reading: Chapter 1. The Palace Workshops: The Emperor and His Servants.

Previous posts:
Introduction

You are welcome to join in at any time!

In this chapter we looked at the Qing court and the inkstone makers there. Here are some optional discussion questions:

What where the main arguments in this chapter? Did you find them convincing?

Did any historical figures introduced in the chapter stand out to you? In what way?

Did any of the inkstones in the chapter stand out to you? In what way?

What did this chapter make you want to learn more about?

Comments

[rhysiana]

I also wondered that about the crevices! Also, I really want to go back to the National Palace Museum in Taipei now. I've been twice, but their collection is truly huge and only a small fraction is ever on display, plus I've learned about a bunch of other types of art beyond the brush paintings I knew about last time I was there.

I'm kind of enjoying learning about the Ming-Qing transition from inference, but it would be particularly interesting to read something about the Ming after this and see how much I interpreted correctly. (I do keep googling various historical figures/time periods I know about to see how they fit in relation to this. The way Luoyang in particular presented the Baili family as engineers on the cusp of being respected scholars seemed topical, but Wu Zetian's rule was 690-705, *way* before the Qing. So the possibilities are: Qing sensibilities persist for people wanting to write historical fiction, Luoyang was not super period-specific, or the Qing differences Ko notes were actually more subtle than she implies. See also: some glimpses of an earlier Ming palace workshop system being referenced in Sleuth, though that one mostly focused on munitions rather than art. We do get a bit of an outside-the-palace art forgeries case, though, with the whole chicken cup plotline.)

[forestofglory]

I think historical fiction often struggles to really show how differently people thought in the past. I haven't seen Luoyang so I can't really speak to that.

On the other hand some of the other books I've read have mentioned engineering as prestigious. The Rise of West Lake talked a lot about the power of various minsters who where in charge of various improvements to the lake -- but it's not clear how much engineering they did themselves.
I've also read a bit about the role of monks in bridge building -- I think they both helped collect money to fund bridges and engineered the bridges themselves at least some of the time.

[rhysiana]

I should look into that book! I've been to West Lake -- I feel like I should know more about it. And feats of engineering throughout history are always fascinating.

The main thing they're building in Luoyang is the giant Buddha/temple I assume the empress really did commission, because it seems to feature in all the fiction set in her reign, the Detective Dee movies being the main other ones I've seen.

[forestofglory]

I really liked The Rise of West Lake! You should check out this story map of the ten views of West Lake co-authored by the author of the book.

[rhysiana]

Oh, they're at NCSU! Now I extra have to read it. Thank you for the link!

[cortue]

Oh I've also been to West Lake and would be very interested to hear more about the position of engineers in the past. Thanks for the rec :D