Imperially-Commissioned Model Calligraphies from the Shiqu Baoji Collection in the Hall of Three Rarities / 御刻三希堂石渠寶笈法帖 by Liang Shizheng, 梁詩正; Qianlong, 乾隆, Emperor of China - 1754: Yuti Sanxi Tang Shiqu Baoji Fatie

Beijing: Imperial Palace, 1754. This copy produced c.1800s. Ink rubbings on heavy traditional paper. Bound in the jingzhe zhuang (accordion or sutra) style (sheets of paper pasted together to form one long strip per volume, pleated into 12.75 x 8.25 inch pages, and encased between plain wood boards with blank labels). Thirty volumes of a 32 volume set. Missing volumes 6 and 22. About 2270 pages. Fair condition. In need of conservation, as to be expected of a 200-300 year-old hand-made book that has survived a war. Rubbings are in very good condition, but some volumes show signs of damp, including wrinkling and light mold. Set may have been rebound in the 1950s after being damaged during the Chinese civil war. Some of the wood covers are split. Some endpapers have detached from their covers. The Yuti Sanxi Tang Shiqu Baoji Fatie (Imperially-Commissioned Model Calligraphies from the Shiqu Baoji Collection in the Hall of Three Rarities) is a monument of cultural patronage sponsored by the Qianlong Emperor. This encyclopedic compilation of 340 of the most important works of calligraphy by 135 artists over 1400 years of Chinese history established a canon of orthodox writing styles in standard, running, and cursive scripts. The set includes about 1500 seals and more than 200 commentaries in 90,000 characters. It is a remarkable demonstration of eighteenth-century connoisseurship and craftsmanship. Formerly the property of Chiu Chang-wei (1898-1956), Secretary General in the Office of the President of the Republic of China during the administration of Acting President Li Zongren. In eighteenth-century China, the best technique for reproducing a work of calligraphy was to make an ink rubbing from a stone engraving (a shutiaoshi or 书条石). A tracing copy of the original was made and transferred onto a finely polished stone. Then the traced design was engraved into the stone so that the characters were reversed. Paper was then laid over the stone, dampened, and pressed carefully into the engraved lines. Finally, ink was patted over the surface of the paper so that the recessed characters appeared white against a black background. The shutiaoshi from which the Sanxi Tang Fatie were produced were commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor in 1747. The imperial court issued the first 32 volume set of ink rubbings in 1754. According to the Journal of the Imperial Palace Museum, in 1792 the volume 18 stones were amended by the insertion of a note at the end of the volume, identifying Epitaph for Wei Yiren, a calligraphy signed Zhao Mengfu, as a forgery. Volume 18 in this set contains the added text, thus dating the rubbing after 1792. Also according to the Journal of the Imperial Palace Museum, in 1839 a major restoration of the shutiaoshi included the recutting of a number of the characters and the addition of a decorative border to conceal damage around the edges of the stones. Only four of the roughly 2270 pages in this set have any evidence of the decorative border (three pages in volume 15 and the last page of volume 18. Compare this set to www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/36142 iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:10222012 www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=SANXITANG FATIE&tab=objects (similar set sold Nov 2019 in Hong Kong for 500,000 HKD, US$65,000) Owner will consider donation to an academic institution with a conservation facility.