Description

A comprehensive exploration of jade and its history in China from Neolithic times to the Qing dynasty.

To the Chinese people, jade is a precious stone endowed with magical properties which encapsulated all that mankind aspires to in terms of character, elegance, tranquility, purity, and virtue. The Chinese love jade not merely because of its rarity or its luster but because of a deeper aesthetic value.

Chinese Jade: The Spiritual and Cultural Significance of Jade in China presents a comprehensive view of jade and its history in China from Neolithic times to the Qing dynasty. It illustrated pieces of jade that are on display not only in the Palace Museum in Beijing but in the many provincial and other museums across China. It will help the reader to understand what jade means to the Chinese in China; how it is classified and described and where it is found and worked and displayed. It has a value beyond that of a simple catalogue and places jade in its natural, and central, cultural context.

About the Author

Born in 1962, Mr. Gu Fang is a renowned scholar of Chinese jade. He graduated from the Archaeology Department of Peking University in 1986 and from the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in 1989.From 1997 to 2000, he worked as a senior visiting scholar at the Department of Asian Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and did comprehensive study on the jade collections there.

Mr. Li Hongjuan was born in Shaanxi in 1986. She graduated from the School of History and Culture at Shandong University, majoring in Archaeology in 2004. She si now the associate chief of the editorial department of Art Market magazine.