Chinese Art and Design edited by Rose Kerr

Chinese Art and Design edited by Rose Kerr, is the book about the Chinese collection at the V&A. I bought it after the meeting on Monday as I thought it would be very good info for applying for the job. The book is arranged the same way as the Chinese room in the V&A and practicaly each piece in the collection has a nice big full page glossy picture of it. I have to say that I do like the way the V&A has divided everything up. Rather than simply going in chronological order they have divided things up into Burial and Death, Temple and Worship, Living, Eating and Drinking, Ruling and Collecting. The last catagory is especially nice as the collection, forgery and production of antiques has such a very long tradition in China, something that normally doesn't get acknowledged.

As far as the history behind the objects went there really wasn't that much new to me, which is probably a good sign, and there were a couple things which I didn't seem quite right to me. There was a little bit about the different production techniques of the objects, but mostly just which materials were used.

It really is a fantastic collection and reading the book really made me want to work there even more! Which means I should probably get to work on the rest of that application!