An extraordinary glimpse into imperial art from the Qianlong Garden, one of China’s most stunning historical sites, located deep within the Forbidden City For centuries, China's Forbidden City has captured the world's imagination. With parts open to the public since 1925, nearly 8 million tourists flock there annually. Yet the elegant, intimate Qianlong Garden—itself a “mini-Forbidden City” inside the Forbidden City—has remained sequestered from view. Dating from the 18th century, the Qianlong Garden was built as a retirement retreat for its namesake emperor, a visionary patron of the arts who designed his garden to reflect a perfect union of art, architecture, and nature. Now undergoing restoration thanks to a groundbreaking international collaboration, it is intended to be open fully to visitors in 2019.
The Emperor’s Private Paradise gives an unprecedented and in-depth analysis of the garden and its extravagant imperial interiors. Essays offer an overview of the history of Chinese gardens and the extraordinary reign of the Qianlong emperor, while contextualizing the importance of the Qianlong Garden and its artworks.
This lavishly illustrated volume is published to accompany a remarkable exhibition of ninety objects from the Qianlong Garden, many of them never seen before, including superlative examples of Qing murals, paintings, wall coverings, furniture, architectural elements, and jades.By illuminating this little-known yet architecturally significant area of the Forbidden City, this volume represents a major contribution to the fields of Chinese art, history, architecture, and gardens.

The Emperor's Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City

Arts & Photography

Berliner, Nancy

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

In the late Qing dynasty (1644-1911) a Chinese merchant named Huang built a house for his family in a small, remote village in the southeastern region of Huizhou in China's Anhui Province. He named the house Yin Yu Tang. For seven generations, members of the Huang family ate, slept, laughed, cried, married, and gave birth in the house. By the mid-1990s, the surviving Huang family members moved away leaving the house empty and abandoned. In 1997 the house was moved to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and opened as a permanent exhibit.Yin Yu Tang provides a fascinating, in-depth look at Chinese domestic culture, architecture, craftsmanship, history, and the impact of these influences on individual lives. Nancy Berliner, one of the country's foremost experts on Chinese furniture and arts, takes the reader on a tour of this unique homestead providing detail on Yin Yu Tang's architecture, construction methods, decoration, furniture, and family heirlooms. She weaves a story of Chinese domestic life, culture, and the remarkable restoration and reconstruction at the Peabody Essex Museum in America.

Yin Yu Tang: The Architecture and Daily Life of a Chinese House

History

Asia

Tuttle+publishing

With hundreds of photographs and a wealth of information, Yin Yu Tang tells the history of a traditional Chinese house and the fascinating stories of its occupants. In the late Qing dynasty, around the year 1800, a prosperous Chinese merchant named Huang built a house for his family in a remote village southwest of Shanghai. He called the home Yin Yu Tang which means Hall of Abundant Shelter—implying his desire for the building to shelter many of his descendants. For seven generations, members of the Huang family ate, slept, laughed, cried, married and gave birth in the house. By the mid-1990s, the surviving members of the Huang family had moved away from Yin Yu Tang to take jobs in the cities. In 2003 the house found a new home as a permanent exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. This book, with its room-by-room, generation-by-generation documentation of life in the house, serves as a unique and invaluable introduction to traditional Chinese family and village life. Nancy Berliner, one of the country's foremost experts on Chinese furniture and arts, takes the reader on a tour of this unique homestead providing detail on Chinese architecture, construction methods, decoration, furniture and family heirlooms. She weaves a story of domestic life in Chinese culture by explaining the traditions of the family who lived here—especially their love and respect for family and ancestors. She also documents the remarkable restoration and reconstruction of Yin Yu Tang, truly a treasure trove of Chinese history. With hundreds of photographs, scores of primary documents, and thousands of fascinating details, Yin Yu Tang: The Architecture and Daily Life of a Chinese House offers a vivid portrait of everyday life in traditional China.

Cincinnati Days in History: A Bicentennial Almanac

Knue, Paul

Cincinnati Post

Beauty Revealed: Images of Women in Qing Dynasty Chinese Painting brings together some of the world’s finest examples of meiren hua (paintings of beautiful women), a largely neglected and misunderstood genre of Chinese painting spanning the country’s last imperial dynasty (1644–1912). Often dismissed as decorative or misinterpreted as highbrow portraits of ladies, these enigmatic and relatively unexamined works are the subject of close scholarly scrutiny in this publication. The corresponding exhibition includes works from the collection of the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive as well as loans from the British Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as a number of other American museums and private collections in England, Sweden and France.

Beauty Revealed: Images of Women in Qing Dynasty Chinese Painting

White, Julia

Cahill, James

Handler, Sarah

Fongfong, Chen

University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Berliner, Nancy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Berliner, Nancy