Qin and Han Dynasty craftsmen

Artisans in Early Imperial China

★ Through cultural relics, this book tells the story of Qin and Han craftsmen, depicting class mobility, business calculations, the division of labor between men and women, crime and punishment, and the struggles of sweat and tears. ★ 2023 Shenzhen Reading Month "Top Ten Books of the Year" selection of the top 30 finalists. ◎ Editor's recommendation (Highlights)
★ Male and female craftsmen, some celebrities, some slaves, some prisoners, they created Qin and Han China. We must understand their business calculations, the working environment, methods and time, and sympathize with their social and economic status, the difficulties of class mobility, the institutional logic of the division of labor between men and women, and the pain of slavery and exploitation. Because, without female craftsmen, there would be no fabrics and lacquerware produced by workshops; without male craftsmen, there would be no bronze and ironware; without countless male and female craftsmen, there would be no palaces and tombs of the Qin and Han royal family and the "middle class".
Risks and illnesses are a deep-seated sorrow for artisans. Take, for example, the gilding workers, known as "yellow coaters," who apply a sticky amalgam of gold leaf and liquid mercury to metal objects. The objects are then baked at low temperatures, causing the mercury to evaporate into highly toxic gases while the gold remains firmly attached to the surface. Mercury poisoning, resulting in irreversible nerve and organ damage, is a daily reality for these artisans.
★ Award-winning masterpiece in art history, economic history, and material culture history. This book is not only a demonstration of art history methodology that can be called "how to transform silent man-made objects into verbal historical materials", but also "the most important English monograph on the social and economic history of the Han Dynasty in the past 25 years."
Levenson Award for Best Book in Chinese Studies, James Henry Brest Book Award from the American Historical Association, Charles Rufus Murray Award for Best Book in Art History from the American Association of College Art...
Recommended by Scholars: The Qin and Han dynasties were a world brimming with aestheticized material production... The concentration of national financial resources resulting from the unification of the country, the emergence of a middle class driven by bureaucracy, and the new symbolic systems constructed to serve this new social structure made the material cultural landscape of the Qin and Han dynasties distinct from that of the Shang and Zhou dynasties in terms of form, scale, and distribution... Professor Li Andun's "Qin and Han Craftsmen" is the only book to reveal and perceive the human dimension of this institutionalized production through the lens of material culture or art history. ... It is also a methodological demonstration of how to transform silent artifacts into verbal historical materials.
——Miao Zhe (renowned art historian, professor at Zhejiang University)
Professor Li Anton clarifies the social position of artisans and the impact of official funding and legal restrictions on their products. This book presents the conditions under which the exquisite works in our museums were produced.
——Lu Weiyi (renowned sinologist, professor at Cambridge University, UK)
Admiring Chinese lacquerware, bronzes, and stone sculptures through the glass cases of museums invites curiosity about how these exquisitely decorated bowls, cups, and utensils were made. While this book doesn't dwell too much on the methods of production, Professor Li's book opens up new territory, taking us beyond the physical features of an object or a building, and the lives of the men and women who worked there, into the complex and hidden world of early Chinese society.
——Rosen (renowned archaeologist and art historian, professor at Oxford University, UK)
This book is a new and authoritative study of craft and industrial organization in early imperial Chinese civilization. It is undoubtedly the most important English-language monograph on the socioeconomic history of the Han Dynasty published in the past 25 years.
——Luo Tai (renowned archaeologist and art historian, professor at the University of California, Los Angeles)
Self-employed artisans, salaried artisans, contract artisans, apprentices, conscripts, and slaves—these real men and women crafted Qin and Han China. Through this book, Professor Li Andun leads us to understand these living individuals and the complex social, commercial, and technological networks in which they existed, allowing us to pause from our superficial observations and begin to appreciate the humanity behind the material cultural heritage of thousands of years ago, just like us today.

2023-07-01

上海三联书店

Ideal Country

516

9787542679918