Decorative Arts
As well as porcelain, a wide range of materials that were more valuable were worked and decorated with great skill for a range of uses or just for display. Chinese jade was attributed with magical powers, and was used in the Stone and Bronze Ages for large and impractical versions of everyday weapons and tools, as well as the bi disks and cong vessels. Later a range of objects and small sculptures were carved in jade, a difficult and time-consuming technique. Bronze, gold and silver, rhinoceros horn, Chinese silk, ivory, lacquer, cloisonne enamel and many other materials had specialist artists working in them.
Read more about this topic: Chinese Art
Famous quotes containing the words decorative and/or arts:
“A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail.... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“But here comes Generosity; giving—not to a decayed artist—but to the arts and sciences themselves.—See,—he builds ... whole schools and colleges for those who come after. Lord! how they will magnify his name!
—One honest tear shed in private over the unfortunate, is worth them all.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)