forestofglory | The Social Life of Inkstones Read Along: Chapter 3

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 3: Suzhou"

Previous posts:
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2

You are welcome to join in at any time!

In this chapter we meet Gu Erniang and several other inkstone carvers and some of their patrons. 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 or other objects in the chapter stand out to you? In what way?

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

Did anything in this chapter remind you of fiction you enjoy? Or inspire creative writing thoughts fic or otherwise?

(I might be slow to respond because my wrist has been acting up again)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

blueshiftofdeath

I actually read this a while back but didn't get the chance to write up my thoughts... so I might be missing some stuff. But here goes!

First of all, super exciting finally learning about Gu Erniang's legacy! The moment we all (or at least I)'ve been waiting for!

One of the first chronological stories we have about her is Huang Zhongjian commissioning an inkstone from her, after he had her father in law make him an inkstone and wanted a new one with better materials. He greatly praised the inkstone and treasured it as a piece to pass on his sons, but his one criticism was that the stone was "too contrived", or literally, "too skillful and crafty".

Obviously I am reading a lot based on extremely skimpy, fourth-hand information from a single probably stuck-up reviewer, but it's easy for me to imagine that Gu Erniang started out with designs that excessively showed off her "skill and craft", given that she had big shoes to fill and presumably would have an uphill battle proving her abilities.

To further read into no information-- Ko mentions how Gu had "nothing short of a meteoric rise" and "it is likely that Erniang had already learned inkstone-making from her father-in-law and husband while both were alive. She may have learned by observing them work, like most apprentices, or received more formal instruction."

Presumably, based on how it only took "a handful of years" to establish herself after her husband's and father-in-law's deaths, she had already been making inkstones while they were alive-- inkstones that matched or even exceeded the value of theirs. I posit that, given what we know about similar situations around the world (where women in a male-dominated field work with their husbands that are established in that field), it's likely that some of her stones were already sold under the name of her husband.

Future directors of an epic Gu Erniang biopic, take note!

Very interesting to me how there was no note (that I recall) of people questioning Gu Erniang's skill due to her sex-- the main barrier it presented seems to be that her allegiance to the family line (the Gu line) was in question, due to additionally having a natal family. To me this is an example of how cultural values that are on the surface equally constricting for all groups can still inherently disadvantage one group-- in this case, the strictness and seriousness of "ancestral lineage" in Chinese culture, due to how lineage works in conjunction with heterosexual marriages, inevitably has logistical issues that leads to women being devalued ("two families must combine to continue a lineage, how is lineage defined?" -> "lineage is defined by the male members of the family" -> literally the patriarchy). Of course we have a similar system in the West, but I think it's less visible to me because lineage specifically is taken more seriously in Chinese culture (and also because my mom constantly complains to me about Chinese ancestor worship).

I also wonder how the "degendering" of Gu Erniang by her clients relates to her being a craftswoman, one two levels. On the first level, as Ko says, the objects a person makes are more important than the person themselves. Versus for scholars, it seems that they were judged based on their "resumes" to some extent, which isn't very surprising. People continue to think "hm, so and so went to a good school and implemented these great ideas-- probably this other idea they came up with is also good!", aka judging a person's output based on the person, rather than the other way around. That's a scenario where sexism is more likely to bar someone from the appreciation they deserve.

On the second level, I wonder if the fact that Gu Erniang was doomed to be lower status than her clients-- due to being a craftsperson, rather than a scholar-- shielded her from insecurity that often leads to the burying of women's reputations. None of these scholars would be threatened whatsoever by the greatest craftsperson of their time being a woman; if she was a scholar, it'd be a different story. This train of thought makes me extra interested in how female scholars fared during this era!

Also on that note is how this relates to the later mythologizing of Gu as an "ultra-feminine persona" by those who (unlike her patrons, who degendered her in some sense) had no direct contact with her; her direct patrons were seeking high quality inkstones for their own sake, leading to the standard "the object is more important than the craftsperson" mentality. People less interested in inkstones for their own sake, and more interested for their theoretical prescribed value (aka forgers and some collectors), would be more likely to prescribe that value based on the person behind them. This could be a challenge with the craftsperson being female (and therefore in theory less skilled than a man), hence needing to lean into female-specific advantages. These inkstones are super good, in a feminine way!

Speaking of reputation, I enjoyed the commentary on how fame was (is?) defined by what people say about your works, rather than your works themselves, and how this effect is exponential over time, as people continue to have more to say about the people that have already had things said about them, and nothing to say about people that have had nothing said about them. In a sense, having 12 existing forgeries of Erniang's inkstones speaks more to the assessment of her at the time than having 12 legitimate works would.

Other thoughts:

Loved the story about the assassin hiding a dagger in a fish! Cool!
It continues to delight me how these people would write poems and encomiums about how great their inkstones are. I guess it's not that different from how I might write a blog post on how much I love my new keyboard/whatever, but the sense of ritual/formality from the praise described in the book is novel and fun to me.
Very happy for Huang Zhongjian getting his 20-year-old wish fulfilled... thank you Ms. Gu!