High-Tech, High-Touch

32  bar steady 30.37  4mph NNW dewpoint 27

                    Full Moon of Winds

Out of the bronze age.  This was a splendid tour and a testimony to the high tech-high touch maxim of Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock.  This was 7 people, four Chinese and three Caucasian, who met through the Meet-Up website.  They had all indicated an interest in things Chinese.  Thus, this was a random group save for their convergence on Meet-Up through their interest in a far-off land.  Amazing.  There we were, more or less strangers, together to study the bronze tradition of ancient China.   So we did.

We moved from the ceramic cases where we discussed the influence of Neolithic ceramic shapes on bronze vessels and the transition from ceramics to bronze as the primary artistic medium, then trekked over the bronze gallery.  There we started with the oldest object in our bronze collection, the jueh wine warmer.  After we identified some of the shapes from the ceramic cases:  hu, lei and ku for example, we dove into piece-mold casting.  This led to a conversation about design and the convergence here between technology and design.    

We followed the t’ao t’ieh mask until it faded in the mid-Zhou dynasty and noticed the birds and more abstract designs that followed.  As the Eastern Zhou began we noticed the change in inscriptions and the shift from public ritual to private artifact until in the Warring States period the bronze vessels no longer had a sacred connotation primarily but had become objects of status. 

To end we noticed the more modest bronze work of the Han and finished in the Sung dynasty ceramics with a celadon ting in miniature.  Bronze vessels had become a treasured objet d’art.