Roots & Rocks Exhibition
October 20th - 31st 2009, New York
Natural forms have been collected in Chinese culture for much of its long history. During the Ming and Qing dynasties there developed a wealthy class of Scholar Officials, who were often called upon to act in an official capacity as magistrates and local representatives of the emperor. These bureaucratic positions, whilst important and often lucrative, sometimes lead these classically trained scholar’s to pine for the idyllic life of the hermit/scholar. With this in mind, they often sought to try and bring nature into the Scholar’s Studio. The most popular way of doing this was to collect natural forms, mostly Scholar’s Rocks and Roots. The passion for collecting these wonderful forms soon spread to the wealthy merchant classes eager to emulate scholarly taste in order to elevate their status in society.
This exhibition aims to introduce this centuries-old genre of collecting through some wonderful examples of Scholar’s Roots and Rocks including a number from the Ian and Susan Wilson Collection.
