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Bard Graduate Center is an advanced graduate research institute in New York City dedicated to the cultural histories of the material world. Our MA and PhD degree programs, Gallery exhibitions, research initiatives, scholarly publications and public programs explore new ways of thinking about decorative arts, design history, and material culture.

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Bard Graduate Center publishes award-winning exhibition catalogues, books, and journals focusing on scholarship in the decorative arts, design history, and material culture.

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Barbara Nessim
An Artful Life


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Waterweavers
A Chronicle of Rivers

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Weaving as Metaphor

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Richard Tuttle
What Is the Object?
BGCX
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Ritual and Capital
BGCX
2020

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BGCX
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BGCX
2023

As the oldest extant illustrated guidebook on classical Chinese ritual implements, the Sanli tu, or Illustrations to the Ritual Classics, is a key source for understanding early scholarship on Chinese material culture. Design by the Book, which accompanies an exhibition at Bard Graduate Center Gallery, discusses the history and cultural significance of this medieval compendium, revealing the complex relationship between the Confucian Classics, the design of ritual objects, and the study of Chinese antiquities.

The Sanli tu survives in a version completed in 961 by Nie Chongyi, a professor at the court of the Later Zhou (951–960) and Northern Song (960–1127) dynasties. It is now mostly remembered—if at all—for its controversial entries and as a quaint predecessor of the more empirical antiquarian scholarship produced since the mid-eleventh century. But such criticism hides the fact that the book remained a standard resource for more than 150 years, playing a crucial role in the Song dynasty’s perception of ancient ritual and its construction of a Confucian state cult. Richly illustrated and including a glossary of the Sanil tu’s 362 entries, Design by the Book brings renewed focus to one of China’s most engaging classics commentaries.

The exhibition Design by the Book: Chinese Ritual Objects and the Sanli tu will be on view at Bard Graduate Center Gallery from March 24th through July 30th, 2017

Table of Content
Director’s Foreword

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I: The San li tu in Medieval China: A Cultural Biography

Chapter 1: Politics and Confucian Ritual in the 950s

Chapter 2: Redesigning the State Ritual Paraphernalia and Compiling the Sanli tu

Chapter 3: Tang Remains

Chapter 4: Didactics and Dynastic Propaganda

Chapter 5: Revisions and Early Antiquarianism

Chapter 6: Rejection, Preservation, Ambivalence

Part II: Ritual Objects in the Exhibition

Appendix 1: Editions of the Sanli tu

Appendix 2: Glossary of the Sanli tu Entries

Appendix 3: Works on View in the Exhibition

Bibliography

Index
Images