Ten Bamboo Studio Collection of Calligraphy and Painting (1633): Art, History and Details

Ten Bamboo Studio Collection of Calligraphy and Painting (1633) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Hu Zhengyan (Chinese, c. 1584–1674).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Color printing reached a level of perfection in the early 1600s, as seen in this Ten Bamboo Studio Collection of Calligraphy and Painting The painterly quality, precision in registering (aligning) the woodblocks, and harmonious colors made them some of the most successful color print editions in Chinese history. Printed and compiled in Nanjing, spread nationwide, the compendium had a great impact on the arts in Japan and Korea.

Object facts

• Title: Ten Bamboo Studio Collection of Calligraphy and Painting
• Date: 1633
• Creator attribution: Hu Zhengyan (Chinese, c. 1584–1674)
• Culture: Southeast China, Jiangsu Province, Nanjing
• Type: Print
• Technique: Woodblock-printed book; ink and colors on paper; first edition 1633
• Dimensions: Open and extended: 23.7 x 27.9 cm (9 5/16 x 11 in.)
• Collection: China - Ming Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1984.45

Collection credit

Edward L. Whittemore Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Edgren, Sören, Tsuen-hsuin Tsien, Fangyu Wang, and Wango H. C. Weng. Chinese Rare Books in American Collections. New York: China House Gallery, China Institute in America, 1984.
• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1984.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 72, no. 2, 1985, pp. 163–207.
• Wilson, J. Keith. "The Fine Art of Drinking: The Chinese Silversmith Zhu Bishan and His Sculptural Cups." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 81, no. 10 (December 1994): 380–401.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.