“Jade Camel Ships on the Silk Road”, an RASBJ Zoom talk by Angus Forsyth
WHAT: “Jade Camel Ships on the Silk Road”, an RASBJ Zoom talk by Angus Forsyth, followed by QA. Moderated by Alan Babington-Smith.
WHEN: Mar. 3, 2021 Wednesday 7:00-8:00 PM Beijing Standard Time
MORE ABOUT THE EVENT: After its domestication 4500 years ago, the Bactrian camel ploughed a lonely furrow across the vast wilderness of Asia. This bizarre-looking, temperamental yet hardy creature came into its own as the core goods vehicle, transporting to China fine things from the West while taking treasures out of the Middle Kingdom in return, linking China in the East with Rome in the West via Persia for perhaps 1,000 years. The wagon and other wheeled conveyances proved useless amidst the shifting desert dunes, but the surefooted camel -– the archetypal ‘ship of the Silk Road’ — reigned supreme. It appealed particularly to Chinese artists because of its association with the exotic trade to mysterious Western lands. This talk is extracted from Forsyth’s book Ships of the Silk Road: The Bactrian Camel in Chinese Jade which illustrates the historical role of this iconic beast of burden; it includes nearly 100 jade pieces, many of which have not appeared in other publications. His most recent book is Celestial Beings and Bird-Men: Human Flight in Chinese Jade and he’s currently working on the illustrated history of jade people over 6000 years.
MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Angus Forsyth is a collector of and authority on Chinese jade and a former president of the Oriental Ceramics Society of Hong Kong. He has studied ancient jades, especially from the Neolithic period, and published widely on the topic. His publications include Chinese Jade and Jades from China, the latter written as the catalogue of an exhibition held in the Museum of East Asian Art in Bath, United Kingdom, featuring more than 200 jades from his collection. Forsyth co-founded the legal firm Stevenson, Wong & Co, from which he retired as Senior Partner in 2017; he has been legal advisor to a number of organisations focused on the arts in Hong Kong.
HOW MUCH: This event is free and exclusively for members of the RASBJ and other RAS branches. If you know someone who wants to join the RASBJ in order to attend this talk, please ask them to sign up via our website at https://rasbj.org/membership/ at least 48 hours before the event.
HOW TO JOIN THE EVENT ON ZOOM
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