Picturing Technology in China

From Earliest Times to the Nineteenth Century

Bibliographic Data

ID19945486
AuthorsPeter J Golas (corresponding author)
Year2015
Publication date2015-01-02
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenuePicturing Technology in China (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherHong Kong University Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1515/9789888313921
OpenAlexW4251565473
ISBN9789888313921
LanguageEN
Citations received7

Although the history of technological and scientific illustrations is a well-established field in the West, scholarship on the much longer Chinese experience is still undeveloped. This work by Peter Golas is a short, illustrated overview tracing the subject to pre-Han inscriptions but focusing mainly on the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. His main theme is that technological drawings developed in a different way in China from in the West largely because they were made by artists rather than by specialist illustrators or practitioners of technology. He examines the techniques of these artists, their use of painting, woodblock prints and the book, and what their drawings reveal about changing technology in agriculture, industry, architecture, astronomical, military, and other spheres. The text is elegantly written, and the images, about 100 in all, are carefully chosen. This is likely to appeal to both scholars and general readers

Appeal · Archaeology · Art · Art history · China · Field (mathematics) · Library science · Painting · Political science · Scholarship · Subject (documents) · Theme (computing) · Visual arts · Architecture · Chinese history and philosophy · Computer Science · History · Law

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Open DOILibgenOpen Access