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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Pictures of Cotton in Eighteenth-Century China

Pictures of Cotton in Eighteenth-Century China

Hammers, Roslyn Lee

Hardcover

Series: Routledge Research in Art History

Art HistoryAsian ArtChinese History

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1032888016
ISBN13: 9781032888019
Publisher: Routledge
Published: Jul 16 2025
Pages: 170
Weight: 0.99
Language: English

Pictures of Cotton in Eighteenth-Century China narrates cotton's journey from a little understand material to a cherished commodity ennobled by associations with the classical heritage of China. In the 12th century, cotton, an imported crop, was plucked from the fields and entered the margins of agricultural treatises. The material was eventually acknowledged as cotton, an object distinct from silk, worthy of representation. By the late 16th century, representations of the plant and of the labor used to process it were incorporated into agricultural publications. During the 18th century, cotton imagery and discussions were situated in imperial encyclopaedias, further consolidating its classical legacy. Governor-general Fang Guancheng (1696/8-1768) deemed cotton a worthy subject for ambitious painting. In 1765, he designed the Pictures of Cotton, a series of sixteen paintings complete with commentary that delineated the processes of growing cotton and manufacturing fabric. He presented the Pictures of Cotton to the Qianlong emperor (r. 1735-1796) who inscribed his imperial verse on each scene. Knowledge about the fiber became a means to collaborate at the highest level of the court and bureaucracy. Fang replicated the series, complete with imperial verses into carved stone to enable replication. The Jiaqing emperor (r.1796-1821) likewise published the series as woodblock prints. Upon domestication, cotton advanced political legitimacy, becoming a commodity that attained canonical status. Cotton was represented in a scopic regime formulated by the Qing imperium, and in the process, the Imperially Inscribed Pictures of Cotton became the authoritative vision of cotton.

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