“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Pico Iyer on Tibet, China and the Dalai Lama
• Revisiting Phnom Penh
• Chinese art on bubble?
• “Life and Marriage in Skya rgya, a Tibetan Village
• Philadelphia Museum of Art: Multiple Modernities: India, 1905-2005
• Astro Boy made from recycled train tickets

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7 Junipers is on medical leave and will return next week.

Cloisonné is a technique of decorative enameling. Sections of the object to be enameled are defined with wires and areas of color are laid down. The term comes from the French word cloisonner, to partition. Examples of Chinese cloisonné date as far back as the 1200s, I think; perhaps it originated in West Asia and spread along the Silk Road.

The development of cloisonné as a major art form in Japan is traditionally attributed to a daimyo artist named Kaji Tsunekichi of Nagoya in Owari Province (modern Aichi Prefecture), who deconstructed a Chinese example to analyze the technique. In part to satisfy Western demand after the opening of Japan, schools of cloisonné artists were producing large numbers of very fine examples by the end of the century. The period from 1880 to 1910 is sometimes called the golden age of Japanese cloisonné.

Shown is a lidded copper-body cloisonné enamel vase with a dragon motif from the collection of the V&A. Probably from Nagoya, it is dated to 1880-1890 (museum no. M.205-1917).

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“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Japonisme at the 1867 world’s fair in Paris
• The colors of India: rangoli
• Bamboo carving museum
• Promoting Ramayana sites in Sri Lanka
• Cross-Pacific encounter: Namban art

Asia House Gallery in London is presenting twentieth-century Chinese works from the Khoan and Michael Sullivan collection in two rotations through 24 May 2008. Michael Sullivan is one of the most influential scholars of Chinese art. His book Chinese Art in the Twentieth Century (1959) was the first in English on the subject, which he continued to explore in Art and Artists of Twentieth Century China (1996).

Shown is Landscapes of the Four Seasons, 1950, by Fu Baoshi.

A Reuters story by Tan Ee Lyn reports on an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. According to the report, an international team of scientists performed X-ray spectrometer analysis of 144 jade ornaments in museums in southeast Asia. The jades were thought to date from 3000 BCE to 500 CE. The analysis determined that at least 116 of the jades were made from stone that originated in Fengtian in eastern Taiwan. Fengtian jade is typically a translucent green mottled with dark spots.

The article quotes lead researcher Hung Hsiao-chun, who noted that one of the Fengtian jades found in the Philippines dates to 2000 BCE:

There was a very huge workshop in Fengtian, dating back to 3,000 BC. Before, researchers thought all the jade in the Philippines was from China or Vietnam. With our analysis … we found that most of the ornamental jade in the Philippines was from Taiwan…. Their seafaring methods must have been very superior, even back then.

Shown is an ancient Fengtian nephrite earring unearthed in the Philippines. The image is from ABC News in Science, where the source is listed as PNAS/Yoshiyuki Iizuka.