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Changing
Styles of Bamboo Carving in the Qing Dynasty
Dr.
Simon Kwan
The keys to building a top quality collection
are to know the right people and to be in the right place
at the right time, but even so, Simon Kwan cautioned, the
process is usually a very slow one. Not, however, in the
case of his bamboo carvings collection. At his conversation
with Asian Art Curator Ronald Otsuka, the Denver audience
was astonished to learn that the core of this collection
was assembled in just three months. He was fortunate to
begin at a time when there was little collecting interest
in bamboo carvings, so many fine objects had accumulated
in the hands of the Hong Kong antique dealers.
Simon
Kwan's bamboo collection covers the many stylistic variations
in China, and he had selected slides to highlight the particular
characteristics of these styles. Following the openwork
carving of the Ming and the deep carving of the early Qing,
a shallower and more pictorial carving developed around
the time of Qian Long (1736-1795), and is favored to this
day by the carvers in Jiading, near Shanghai. The darkening
in color and the way the bamboo fibers separate over the
centuries help to date carvings, and authenticating it on
the basis of appearance and style can prove more reliable
than textual evidence from the body of Ming (1368-1644)
and Qing (1644-1911) literature on the subject.
In
his workshop, Simon Kwan described the excitement and surprise
that collection research can provide. Misinformation given
in a mid-1900s text on bamboo carvers from the Ming and
Qing had led to experts dating the work of carver Zhang
Xihuang to the early 1600s. Research into earlier texts
and stylistic evidence from carvings in his and other collections
have led Simon Kwan to another conclusion - that Zhang Xihuang
could only date from the late Qing.
Looking
at objects from the museum's collection helped the audience
to see the ageing process of bamboo, and, with Simon Kwan's
commentary, the stylistic differences between the objects
became more clearly apparent. His eye for detail and passion
for detective work have no doubt won many converts to the
art of bamboo carving.
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