Abstract
THE sumptuous monograph on the Bishop collection in New York entitled “Investigations and Studies in Jade” is so rare as to be inaccessible, and consequently there is room for another work on the subject. The authorities of the Field Museum of Natural History of Chicago were well advised to entrust the Black-stone expedition to Tibet and China to Dr. B. Laufer, and to encourage him to describe the jade objects he collected in a comprehensive monograph. As a matter of fact, his specimens largely supplement, and only slightly duplicate, the wonderful collection in New York, as most of them were exhumed from ancient graves, whereas the majority of the specimens in the Bishop collection are modern. Similarly, his monograph supplements the other; he does “not deal with jade for its own sake, but as a means to a certain end; it merely forms the background, the leading motive, for the exposition of some fundamental ideas of Chinese religious concepts which find their most characteristic expression and illustration in objects of jade.”
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
HADDON, A. Jade in Chinese Secular Life and Religion 1 . Nature 91, 226–227 (1913). https://doi.org/10.1038/091226a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/091226a0