Kate Lingley 龍梅若

@klingley.bsky.social

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Art historian of medieval China; Assoc Prof, UH Mānoa. Feminist; foodie; early-music nerd; Jewish mother; SF/F fan; knitter; Maine native. She/her. Buddhist monuments and women's history in early medieval China. IG @kate.lingley for lace knitting etc

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Out back of my office. I have questions.

Reply to

Brendan O’Kane

The shell cup makes me think of this one, from the tomb of Wang Xingzhi 王兴之 (d. 340), uncle of the great calligrapher Wang Xizhi. It was doubtless in better shape at one time, but shows its age now (Top that, early modern cabinets of curiosities). More: www.njmuseumadmin.com/Antique/anti...

Early-morning Selenicereus blooms on the way in to work (These are S. undatus, iirc, from the famous Punahou hedge, which is well over a hundred years old.)

Reply to

Kate Lingley 龍梅若

Many Han figures are wonderfully expressive, from the elegance of a sleeve dancer to the humor of a storyteller with his drum. Others are quite utilitarian. But I can’t think of later examples that explore the problem of representation quite like the Qin-Han examples. (28/fin)

Reply to

Kate Lingley 龍梅若

His tomb, the Yangling mausoleum, contained among other things thousands of terra-cotta servants and soldiers at half life-size. The figures are modeled as anatomically correct, armless male and female nudes, with points for mounting wooden (possibly jointed) arms. (24/n)

It seems likely that the figures were dressed in real clothing, much like this (smaller) steward figure from the Han tombs at Mawangdui. No arms or clothing survive at Yangling, but then it is hard to imagine the soldiers and servants going into the earth as armless nudes. (25/n)

Reply to

Kate Lingley 龍梅若

But then along comes this guy. The first emperor of Qin, with his terra-cotta army of life-sized soldiers. He famously didn’t care what Confucius thought. But also, these figurines reflect a kind of quantum leap in representation and realism, which many scholars have wrestled with. (14/n)

Reply to

Kate Lingley 龍梅若

The replicas, usually made in pottery (north China) or wood (south China), were usually recognizable but simplified representations of the things they were meant to provide, such as this 5cm pottery figurine from a Zhou tomb, which has a rudimentary face and no hands or feet. (6/n)

Wooden figurines from the region of Chu in the south were often more detailed and painted beautifully in lacquer, but they were still stylized representations, and rarely more than 30cm in height. (7/n)

Clearly such figures could be efficacious without strongly resembling the human servants they represented, either in detail or in scale. An entire line-up of tiny clay musicians could evidently mean you would enjoy the services of a real private ensemble in the afterlife. (8/n)

This is 100% true and it makes me think about one of the great questions of Chinese tomb art, which is how realistic do your little guys need to be in order to ensure that they turn up in your afterlife? This is a placeholder post for a thread to be named later (tomorrow) because it is late.

i love that human culture will be making little guys until the ocean evaporates

Flying white 飛白 (a set of beautiful porcelain cups, gifts of a gifted student I worked closely with this year) 🤩

I posted this as a reply to someone but this is Bluesky so it’s probably not showing up much… when you buy a chocolate seder plate, of course you have to make meringues shaped like bones and eggs, make some sugared mint leaves and etc. (The “etc.” included some real wasabi, to my kid’s surprise)

Reply to

Patrick

I found a dark chocolate seder plate and so obviously had to make bone-shaped meringues and candied mint leaves

Reply to

Hillary Monahan

I'll see you the shark-cuterie board and raise you this manta ray sushi platter one of my students made:

A broadcast yesterday about recent discoveries from a Chu princely tomb at a site called Wuwangdun ("King Wu's Hill") had to run a special chyron while discussing the tomb occupant, likely King Kaolie of Chu. It says 武王墩是地名，和“武王”没有关系 ("Wuwangdun is a placename. It has nothing to do with King Wu.")

This is my all time favorite Facebook “On this day” reminder, especially since it has been well over ten years since I could remember what I meant by it.

Someone I follow might enjoy this excellent bugge I found on my lanai. @franzanth.bsky.social or @premeemohamed.com ?

Facebook reminded me that it is the fifteenth anniversary of a major professional milestone 😆

My kids’ blondie competition has begun. On the right, Auntie Jerelyn’s famous caramel bars. On the left, a recipe involving brown butter and maple syrup. Who will be the winner? (There are four competitors in all, to be judged by a jury of their peers at lunch tomorrow.)

As a singer, I love complex polyphony, especially from early modern English and Flemish composers… I think that may go some way to explaining why I also loved knitting a scarf with this stitch pattern.

Guess I’m going nowhere today

Sinology in the wild

Big mood

I have some art in my office

I just finished this shawl (made to a design by Julia Decker) as a gift for a friend.

Post something you made that AI could never. Here is my little wood dragon marionette that I made based on a medieval dragon woodblock print. She has splayed legs, a few weird notches from my slightly misplaced chisels, hastily tied knots, and she moves like a chicken.

Turned up on my office door around lunchtime yesterday. Wouldn’t do a damn thing about my car insurance rates. Some people, man.

鑼聲鏜鏜

Age 21, on a rainy day in Shanghai, fall 1992. Fudan University foreign students dorms (as they then were)

Dug up my facsimile of Ren Xiong's famous 1854 playing cards, used to play a drinking game. Boy would these be fun to translate. Each has a different Daoist immortal, with a short description and an instruction as to who must take a drink. This is Guangchengzi: (1/n)