Chinese Calligraphy by Edoardo Fazzioli - 1987: From Pictograph to Ideogram: The History of 214 Essential Chinese/Japanese Characters

Decorative, glossy, unclipped dustjacket has slight edge curl along the top edge, but otherwise in very good condition. Hardbound bright, textured red cloth boards are in excellent condition with the same Chinese symbol embossed on the front cover as on the dustjacket. The spine has gold gilt text and is also in excellent condition with no wear to the top or bottom of the back strip. All the corners are sharp with no bumping. Spine has a very slight slant but is firm, with no cracking to the endpapers. Text block is solid with all pages firmly attached. All interior pages are clean with no tears, cracks, or previous owner marks. Color and black/white illustrations.

Written Chinese is made up of about 40,000 characters, many of which originated approximately 6,000 years ago as little pictures of everyday objects. This book is based on a classic compilation of the Chinese language done in the 18th century, which determined that all the characters then in use were devised from 214 root pictographs or symbols. Originally written in Italian this book has been translated into several languages. Fazzioli organizes the radicals into groups based on their similarities in form or meaning as has been done in some classical works - man, body, to journey, village, paintbrush, dragon, jade, yellow.

Edoardo Fazzioli (1934 - ) was born in Milan and for ten years was a correspondent in Hong Kong for an international agency. During that time, he also studied Chinese language and culture at Hong Kong University becoming a sinologist. From 1964 to 1971 he taught philosophy at Hong Kong colleges and at the same time was a member of the editorial board of "Chine News Analysis", an agency that analyzed news from the People's Republic of China. He later became a member of the Italo-Chinese Institute for Economic and Cultural Exchange.