This scholarly volume comprises twenty-six short, dense articles divided into eight sections, each addressing a cluster of artifacts in related media. Every section opens with an insightful introduction to the key significance of the featured media. Far more than an exhibition catalogue—not merely due to its restrained use of glossy photos—this volume carefully curates images to build a compelling visual argument: nineteenth-century Chinese art and material culture were vibrant, innovative, cosmopolitan, and often unconventional, countering stereotypes of stagnation, morbidity, insularity, or derivativeness. The volume opens new horizons for studying nineteenth-century China, offering a more interdisciplinary yet coherent approach than conference proceedings. The contributors include erudite scholars, curators, and meticulous early-career researchers. Many of the ten-page essays distill years of doctoral research or decades of hands-on expertise.

The section divisions balance established curatorial categories (painting, calligraphy, seal carving, prints, textiles, decorative arts) with themes from recent multidisciplinary inquiries (vernacular painting, maps, money, fashion, craft, and environment). Jessica Harrison-Hall’s lead introduction lays out the volume’s conceptual framework and perceptual perspectives. By embracing diverse primary sources and inclusive methodologies, the volume redefines perceptions of nineteenth-century Chinese art and material culture, revealing a century of resilient creativity despite military conflicts and economic hardship. The essays highlight dynamic reshufflings across media, elite and popular spheres; gender, regional peripheries and cultural centers; and multiethnic (Manchu, Miao, Han) and multinational (Europe, Russia, Japan) exchanges. Methodologically, the volume builds on art historical analysis while reaching into economic, scientific, sensory, and environmental histories, offering insights into how art and material culture were shaped by intellectual trends, social networks, global trade, diplomacy, media regimes, gender hierarchies, and environmental constraints.

As Craig Clunas notes the “cultural newness” of this period, each contributor to the painting section reveals fresh dynamics between artists and audiences, redefining authorship and generating new artistic forms. In Chapter 1, Michele Matteini’s exploration of Liulichang—a bustling marketplace south of the Forbidden City selling antiques, artwork, rare books, and souvenirs—sets the scene for the century’s art transactions, appreciation, and creation. His interpretation of the marketplace as “transient yet thoughtful presentations” serves as a metaphorical chronotope for nineteenth-century China: a space of shattered homes and bustling workplaces that inspired artists and craftsmen alike.

One form of creativity emerges in the intermedial dialogue between painting and rubbing art, which Michael Hatch, in Chapter 2, terms an “epigraphic aesthetic.” By examining literati like Huang Yi (1744–1801), Ruan Yuan (1764–1849), Chen Hongshou (1768–1822), Xi Gang (1746–1803), and Liu Zhou (1791–1858), Hatch shows how heightened attention to materiality and tactility in epigraphy, calligraphy, and painting fostered new modes of interpersonal relations and intrapersonal dynamics, blending sensory experience with cultural symbolism.

In Chapter 3, Roberta Wue’s ingenious analysis of Ren Bonian’s (1840–1895) fan compositions dramatizes their ambiguity as paintings, status accessories, and witty objects. Ren’s visual strategies—such as alternating between reality and image, compacting compositions, and using confrontational anthropomorphism (e.g., birds staring at viewers)—responded to Shanghai’s urban experiences: fleeting encounters, heightened self-awareness, and the complexity of late Qing social identity. These defiant engagements with distracted urban patrons were shared among painters navigating the era’s media regimes, particularly the printing industry.

In Chapter 4, Peng Ying-chen’s study of the portraits of Empress Xiaoquancheng (1808–1840) reveals the emerging “assertive visual representation of female agency” in the patronage of imperial portraits. The presence of personality, along with an unconventional choice of clothing and accessories, evident in the informal portraits, suggests the beginning of a loosening of patriarchal control over representation. Further complicating the power dynamics of patronage in this genre, Peng situates Xiaoquancheng’s case within the increasing visibility of empresses in the development of group imperial portraits from Emperor Qianlong (1736–1795), Daoguang (1820–1850), to Empress Dowager Cixi (1861–1908). I wonder whether the inclusion of children contributed to the expression of affection.

Rodrick Whitfield’s introduction to section 2 begins with the curriculum of the eminent historian Zhou Yiliang (1913–2001), which vividly illustrates the continuity of elite culture in the arts of writing across various formats and material substrates, such as oiled paper tracing calligraphy, steles, constructed rubbings, and seal carving. These practices were connected within the intellectual context of antiquarian studies, and so were their practitioners in China and Korea. The essays in this section substantiate Whitfield’s arguments and demonstrate how these cultural practices related to writing intermingled, took on new forms, and flourished in the South.

For instance, in Chapter 5, Weitian Yan examines how the Ye merchant lineage of Guangzhou utilized “model-letter compendia” to assert interregional cultural distinction. Yan’s analysis of the inclusion, techniques, and stylistic choices of Fujianese calligraphers in three major compilations reveals how the Ye family celebrated their ancestry, showcased expansive networks, and crafted a cultural history of Guangdong. Such an interplay of regional pride and artistic innovation recurs throughout the volume.

Yeewan Koon’s Chapter 6 challenges the historical perception of Lingnan (Guangdong/Guangxi) as culturally peripheral by focusing on the Buddhist-related artworks of Su Renshan (1814–c. 1850). Koon highlights Su’s fascinating formal innovations within a media regime that emphasizes “inscriptional space,” international Buddhist learning, and the experience of Lingnan social welfare practices. Su’s painting and calligraphy foregrounded local Cantonese pride and regional histories, often creatively diverging from the elite literati’s focus on central traditions. Given the multiple individual artistic expressions like Su Renshan’s, particularly in Guangdong, how can we formulate a broader understanding of regional cultural identity in 19th-century China?

In Chapter 7, a highly informative documentation of seal carving and the publication of seal manuals in the late Qing dynasty, along with substantial Korean connections with Chinese carvers, Chia-Ling Yang attributes the surge in seal carving to the development of evidential scholarship, the disruption caused by the Taiping Civil War, and Shanghai’s emergence as a printing hub. Yang provides a fascinating roadmap of the changing technologies and styles associated with the Anhui School and the Zhejiang School, highlighting eminent figures and their “abrasive blade” and “cutting blade” techniques. Given the chapter’s length, it may be unfair to demand further explanation of how the formal quality of seal inscriptions convey carvers’ “emotions, memories, and laments.”

Yu-ping Luk’s introduction to Section 3 highlights the functional nature and distinction of nineteenth-century vernacular, non-elite images in China compared to elite paintings, while also acknowledging the blurry boundaries given that the elite paintings discussed in the section include ancestral images, New Year prints, and reverse glass paintings. Luk emphasizes the transformative impact of new technologies such as photography and lithography, alongside the increased production of traditional woodblock prints for rural markets. Attention to regional differences and the transfers and exchanges across various media and production sites opens a new horizon for this category of material culture.

In Chapter 8, Wen-chien Cheng examines three forms of ancestral images: painted portraits, pedigree scrolls, and mass-produced prints. All three catered respectively to commissioners from different social classes. Cheng illustrates how this vernacular genre adapted to the evolving visual culture by incorporating Western painting techniques and photographic portraits to enhance emotional connections and evoke the presence of forebears. The most refreshing takeaway is the varied demand for verisimilitude, which ranges from photographic likenesses and stock images found in drafting manuals to the indistinct faces of ancestors depicted in pedigree scrolls.

In Chapter 9, Alina Martimyanova insightfully links the transmedial connections in the work of three artists to their moving between locations -- the court, Shanghai, Yangliuqing, and Laizhou. Martimyanova identifies “recurring and recognizable pictorial elements,” whether figures or compositional variations, that cross over between Qian Hui’an’s (1833–1911) New Year prints and extensive huapu (catalogues, manuals, collection books, art treatises, and hybrid forms of these); between Gao Tongxuan’s (1835–1906) prints and literary illustrations; and between Wu Baozhen’s (c. 1872–c. 1940) paper and reverse glass paintings. These are indeed phenomenal discoveries, and my subsequent question is how the transmedial and geographical movements synchronize and at what intervals, or in other words, what material and social conditions channel these connections.

In Chapter 10, Patrick Conner builds upon Carl Crossman’s foundational work to firmly establish Spoilum (or Spoilums?) as a pivotal Cantonese export portrait painter. Through meticulous analysis of newly uncovered evidence—including miniatures—Conner delineates Spoilum’s distinctive stylistic signatures: his characteristic rendering of eyes, nuanced facial expressions, and unique approaches to material frames. The rigorous examination not only provides clear attribution markers for Spoilum’s oeuvre but also suggests the intriguing possibility that generations of artists may have worked under this cognomen.

Shane McCausland’s introduction to Section 8 not only highlights the unconventional range of cultural media examined—including maps, books, lithographs, photographs, and money—but also points out the value of heeding circulation and exchange in creating a new reality by giving agency to things and people, thus reshuffling hierarchies for a cosmopolitan nineteenth-century China as well as for our own.

In Chapter 11, Xue Zhang demonstrates how maps attached to palace memorials served as efficient tools for Qing emperors and officials to manage borderlands, particularly in turbulent Xinjiang during the Daoguang reign (1820–50). These often-schematic maps, coupled with highly formatted texts, facilitated the transmission of vital strategic information for military control, hydraulic construction, and agricultural colonization. These action-oriented maps were produced much faster than scaled maps. I wonder whether their standardized content and format might reflect a practical aesthetic of the court.

In Chapter 12, Emma Harrison examines five rare items in the British Library to explore individual and communal “perception and awareness” of knowledge transmission. Harrison meticulously analyzes the content and organization of a pentaglot dictionary (c. 1794), a Qing Empire map (c. 1800), Wei Yuan’s (1794–1857) Illustrated Treatise on Maritime Countries, British missionary Joseph Edkins’s (1823–1905) essay The Nature of God (annotated by Taiping leader Hong Xiuquan [1814–1864]), and the illustrated lithographic magazine Dianshizhai huabao. Given the interconnectedness Harrison highlights, I may ask whether authors of these books distinguished knowledge and information. And were the authors aware that time affected the validity of their mediated communication?

In Chapter 13, Amy Matthewson examines Victorian traveler Isabella Bird’s complex intercultural encounters in China through her writings and photographs, with particular attention to her dependence on Chinese interpreters, guides, and servants. Bird’s account reveals her dual position as both a privileged Westerner and a woman, maneuvering through her cultural prejudices while cultivating a genuine appreciation for China. Her experiences provide valuable insight into broader patterns of global interaction and cross-cultural comprehension in late nineteenth-century China. Additional context regarding Bird’s education and religious background could have further illuminated her perspectives, had space permitted.

In Chapter 14, Helen Wang and Joe Cribb present an exceptionally concise yet comprehensive survey of nineteenth-century China’s complex monetary history, drawing on the British Museum’s collection of coins, ingots, paper money, and money-shaped artifacts. Foreign silver imports and the Opium Wars disrupted China’s monetary system, creating a hybrid economy in which traditional brass coins circulated alongside various foreign silver currencies. Due to the Qing government’s conservative policies, currency management frequently devolved to local merchants and later provincial authorities. I might ask whether this “apparent chaos” in the monetary system mirrored the broader economic and political challenges facing the late Qing dynasty.

Dorothy Ko’s introduction to Section 5 compellingly challenges the myth of static Chinese fashion, demonstrating instead a dynamic sartorial system, evident not in garment silhouettes, but in ornaments, accessories, fabric designs, and color palettes. New technologies, long-distance trade networks, and cross-cultural exchanges facilitated creative material reuse. Ko draws parallels between Chinese and Victorian English fashion dynamics. And she proposes that historical Chinese practices may yield valuable insights for contemporary sustainable fashion development.

In Chapter 15, Sarah Cheang thoroughly examines late Qing women’s hairdressing as both a site of social/institutional control and a medium for self-expression and subversion of patriarchal convention. Situating her analysis within broader contexts of design reform, transnational aesthetics, and material constraints, Cheang investigates the use of kingfisher feathers, pith paper, and other materials—revealing their connections to global trade networks and innovative substitutions. Moving beyond conventional studies of craft and custom, the chapter reframes hair ornaments as critical objects at the intersection of fashion theory, bodily practice, and the negotiation between social norms and individual agency. This approach yields fresh insights into evolving conceptions of female modernity.

In Chapter 16, Rachel Silberstein elucidates two pivotal technological developments in Qing textile production and their sartorial consequences across social strata: advancements in cotton dyeing techniques and the adoption of synthetic aniline dyes. With sharp analytical precision, Silberstein identifies the growing tension between persistent state-mandated color regulations and emerging informal sartorial discourses. She meticulously analyzes color terminology across three primary sources: a 1562 confiscation inventory with detailed nomenclature, The Cloth Classic (late eighteenth century), and an 1888 trousseau record from a Zhejiang gentlewoman. Her comparative table (pp. 184–86) demonstrates evolving cultural, geographical, and natural references in textile nomenclature. The appearance of entirely new categories in the 1888 document prompts her examination of European aniline dyes and their unexpected local reception. The nomenclature of textile color would make a productive comparison with the color terminology in other crafts, such as ceramics, while the names of ceramic glazes are mostly based on minerals but offer significantly overlapping references.

In Chapter 17, Meimei Rado examines the Qing court’s acquisition of Japanese Meiji decorative arts—particularly cloisonné enamel, textiles, silverware, and screens—demonstrating how these objects functioned as models for Chinese industrial reform. She details shared design elements, such as the crane motifs appearing on both Japanese and Qing textiles. Imperial purchases and diplomatic gifts testify to the Qing court’s political strategy of emulating Japanese institutions to modernize its handicraft industries, marking a period of significant Sino-Japanese cooperation. Furthermore, Rado highlights world exhibitions of handicrafts and industry as crucial sites for this cross-cultural exchange and artistic emulation.

Yuhang Li’s introduction to Section 6 offers an effective conceptual framework by foregrounding the communicative power of textiles—garments and fabrics employed in temples, theaters, temporary structures, and arches. Li calls for understanding how textiles actively shaped individual and collective subjectivities, particularly in constructing ritual and festival spaces.

In Chapter 18, Nancy Berliner traces the development of Chinese patchwork textiles across two millennia, from their origins in Buddhist monastic traditions (exemplified by the jiasha robe) through Daoist adaptation and eventual secularization as domestic decoration and artistic expression. Religious practitioners’ symbolic textile use profoundly influenced wider cultural practices, with reverberations beyond China. The chapter prompts the question of whether the nineteenth century was a potential turning point—extant late Qing Daoist robes with their strikingly vibrant, nearly optical-art palettes (based on my observations) suggest significant aesthetic evolution. I wonder how patchwork’s spiritual meanings transformed as the practice moved between sacred and everyday contexts, becoming enmeshed with sensory experience across different social spheres.

In Chapter 19, Chi-Lynn Lin counters the colonial narrative of China’s carpet industry by revealing significant Qing government promotion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Initially viewed by the Chinese as nomadic exotica, carpets became national art through world fairs and global competition. Western woolens spurred—rather than replacing—domestic demand.

Wang Cheng-hua’s introduction to Section 7 challenges the reductive view of nineteenth-century Chinese decorative arts as merely transitional between the “glorious eighteenth century” and the “modern Republican era.” She highlights new patronage models and the emergence of diverse production centers, such as Canton and Shanghai. Emphasizing a nuanced approach to “Sino-European artistic interaction,” the introduction underscores how contributors analyze technological innovations and production systems, moving beyond stylistic influences.

In Chapter 20, Xiaoxin Li examines Cantonese-style furniture, with particular focus on the “doctor’s desk.” While traditional scholar’s studies rarely featured tables with drawers—which were associated with concealing inelegant items rather than displaying refined taste—these pieces gained popularity in nineteenth-century Canton, named for their use by physicians to store medical instruments. Li contends that this shift reflects emerging urban modernity, where practical functionality and information organization began to eclipse conventional aesthetic values, mirroring broader sociopolitical transformations in late Qing China.

In Chapter 21, Shelly Xue addresses Qing imperial glass production, examining its quantitative and qualitative decline alongside the emergence of so-called folk glass production (unmarked pieces). Her study illuminates the relations between court and folk production, exemplified by Boshan glass. Additional space might have allowed for deeper exploration of court workshop collaborations with local artisans and international trade networks.

In Chapter 22, one of the volume’s most visually stunning contributions, Jessica Harrison-Hall demonstrates the remarkable resilience and innovation of China’s ceramic production. Beyond maintaining traditional motifs despite the Taiping War’s destruction of Jingdezhen kilns, her analysis reveals striking new color palettes (including dusky pinks and fresh greens) and experimental forms—even in ritual vessels. The essay particularly illuminates how Empress Dowager Cixi’s studio pioneered entirely novel ceramic styles, from nesting vessels to designs inspired by paintings and popular prints. The novelty raises a question: how might we better exhibit and study the full spectrum of ceramic production—from imperial to export wares, and from ritual objects to everyday utensils—in all their interconnected complexity?

In Chapter 23, Maria L. Menshikova analyzes late-nineteenth-century Sino-Russian gift exchanges, particularly Guangxu Emperor’s presents to Tsar Nicholas II, showing that relations continued. The study documents mutual cultural interest through archaeological expeditions and press coverage, while highlighting Li Hongzhang’s (1823–1901) dual-purpose mission of gift-giving and observation. How did such “memorable offerings” function within the contentious Chinese Eastern Railway negotiations in Manchuria and Mongolia—preserving tradition or forging new diplomacy?

Ching-Fei Shih’s introduction to Section 8 foregrounds craft technology and environmental history, demonstrating how world’s fairs and foreign patronage revitalized Chinese craftsmanship, to counter narratives of decline. Shih emphasizes China’s industrial modernization through imported technologies and institutions like the Bureau of Crafts, while also addressing industrialization’s environmental effects, particularly global resource extraction and depletion of materials such as ivory. This analysis prompts consideration of how artistic forms might be integrated with craft investigation—an innovative approach for period exhibitions.

In Chapter 24, Yijun Wang offers a meticulous analysis of Chinese scholar-official Wu Qijun’s (1789–1847) Illustrated Strategy of the Mines in Yunnan, a groundbreaking treatise that systematized local mining knowledge for bureaucratic use, effectively transforming Confucian officials into “technocrats.” Wang demonstrates how Wu’s innovative employment of illustrations and maps (“tulüe”) to document mining technologies and routes signaled a pivotal shift in Qing governance—from limited state involvement to active resource exploitation for imperial preservation. Han Chinese officials participated more in technical specialization, while Manchu and other ethnically marked officials continued to appear prominently within these knowledge networks.

In Chapter 25—one of the volume’s most politically engaged essays—Susan Eberhard reveals how Cantonese silversmiths fashioned export wares from American silver, embossing them with martial decorative motifs. She demonstrates how this “mythologized conflict” served dual purposes: displacing contemporary imperial violence with romanticized historical narratives while physically repurposing silver extracted through China’s South American monetary trade. Eberhard further exposes how the British press perpetuated “picturesque extraction” (p. 298). The essay stands as an exemplary synthesis of formal analysis, material study, and nuanced political critique.

In Chapter 26, Jonathan Schlesinger situates nineteenth-century China within broader global environmental transformations, including fossil fuel adoption, population pressures, and biodiversity reduction. Agricultural intensification—enabled by new crops—triggered deforestation, soil erosion, and catastrophic flooding. Through objects like ivory snuff bottles, Schlesinger reveals how material culture embodied the profound connections between Chinese society and planetary environmental histories.

This volume brilliantly illuminates nineteenth-century China’s material culture through the lenses of artists, patrons, and institutions. It highlights dynamic innovation, global interconnectedness, transmedial interactions, and shifting hierarchies. I was convinced that the material and visual culture of the period was far from stagnant, but rather was resilient and cosmopolitan indeed. My sole critique is organizational: references are cited by author and date in chapter endnotes, with full details only in the bibliography, making it cumbersome to locate multi-author works or distinguish same-surname publications. The volume is a foundational and invaluable resource for both specialists and readers desiring a full picture of nineteenth-century China in the world.