The Chinese Scholar's Desk by Nigel Cameron

[robot_mel]

This book I picked up with Shanghai Calenders. It's a lovely collection of pictures of the Chinese calligraphy brushes, inkstones, paper, calligraphy and old photos. It's accompanied by a text throughout, however the text makes the very common mistake of refering to Imperial China as one big unchanging time period, and while outlining how candidates would have to progress through examinations neglects to mention, when these practices took place. But really it's not a book you buy for the writing, rather for the lovely pictures it contains. It was very beautiful.