Artefact: "A Sketch of Chinese Arts and Crafts" by Hilda Arthurs Strong
A book in the Pavilion library caught our eye the other day. A Sketch of Chinese Arts and Crafts by Hilda Arthurs Strong is a beautifully presented trove of research, which remains fascinating a century after its first print run in 1926.
The author shows respect for the culture of China, and an affection for its ways of life that offers the modern reader a comfortable foundation from which to explore the book’s content. This is a readable glossary, split into categories, which together give an overview of the history and mythology of Chinese arts and crafts, as well as its main art forms and materials. Its bibliography includes texts by, among others, E. T. C. Warner and Arthur Waley, which are still cited today.
We loved this charming book and wanted to share it with you, in the hope that you will seek out a copy for yourself from a library, or secondhand retailer. Among our collection of old research books, it is stands out for its lively tone and the applicable nature of its research, especially regarding symbols and motifs in Chinese arts and crafts.
There is little biographical information available on Hilda Arthurs Strong, but we know that she was born in 1888 in Toronto, and first travelled to China with her first husband, a missionary. When he died, she returned to China and married again. A book review, written by her, was published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland in 1937.
A second edition of A Sketch of Chinese Arts and Crafts was published in 1933 by Henry Vetch, a storied publisher who ran La Libraire Francaise, a French bookstore located in the lobby of Grand Hôtel de Pékin. Vetch was famously detained in 1949, and accused of plotting to assassinate Mao Zedong. On his release five years later, he was deported to Hong Kong and became the first director of the Hong Kong University Press.
Hilda Arthurs Strong’s book is a peaceful read, but the years of its first and second editions reveal it to be a product of a time of flux in China. The address of “Peiping” on its title page alone speaks to some of the political upheaval in China that Strong must have witnessed. Peiping, meaning “Northern Peace” or “Northern Plains”, was a Ming era name for Beijing which was reinstated by Sun Yat-sen in 1911, when he moved the capital to Nanjing (since Beijing, then romanised as Peking, means North Capital). In 1938, the occupying Japanese forces took it, and it was Peking. In 1945, the Nationalist Government reverted to Peiping, only to be overthrown four years later by Communists, who named it Peking again.
Despite the era of its writing, the book is humble in its dedication to demystifying Chinese arts and crafts, and it is ultimately this focus that leaves it such an enduring piece of scholarship.
We have chosen some of our favourite passages and images here to share with you.
“If one wishes to be acquainted with the Past and the Present he must read Five Cartloads of books.” Chinese Proverb
“The Four Supernatural Creatures: This group comprises the benficient creatures known as the Unicorn and the Phoenix, which influenced new life in the spring, and the Tortoise and the Dragon, which had to do with the showers of summer and their productivity.”
“Chinese history opens with the tradition of a lone figure emerging from chaos. With hammer and chisel P’an Ku, the Architect of the Universe, set about his gigantic task of fashioning a world. For eighteen thousand years he hewed and wrought, and dying, left to the earth his body. HIs breath became the cloud and the winds, his voice the thunder, his eyes the sun and the moon; his flesh was changed to fields, his bones to mountains and minerals, his hair to trees and his beard to stars; and of the living creatures on his person were made the ancestors of the human race.”
Hilda Arthurs Strong was an author who lived and worked in China during the early twentieth century. You can search for this book at the Open Library or on Abe Books or other retailers.