1701 - Stone rubbings of portraits and biographies of famous Chinese philosophers

Collection of portraits and biographies of famous Chinese philosophers, poets, and legendary wise older men. All portraits and text are original rubbings from stone tablets dated 1644 (last year of the Ming dynasty).
The preface is dated 1701 and notes that it was written by the famous emperor Kangxi (1662-1722). The book is made in a very small number, most likely for those closely related to Emperor Kangxi.
The young Emperor – on the throne since the age of seven and effectively in control from the age of fifteen – went about the task of shaping the future of his immense territory by acquiring a clear understanding of every subject that mattered. He found teachers wherever he discovered a high standard of expertise.

Emperor Kangxi was keenly interested in intellectual and technical challenges.

One of the Kangxi Emperor’s greatest contributions to the arts was the establishment of additional imperial workshops in the Forbidden City itself. He also initiated or sponsored a large number of literary compilations, linguistic and lexicographic studies and other intellectual projects. This not only raised the standard of scholarship but also occupied unemployed officials, and won the Manchu dynasty's confidence and support among the Han élite.

The Complete Collection of Illustrations and Writings of Ancient and Modern Times (Gujin tushu jicheng), one of the world’s largest book projects, originated as a private undertaking but was adopted as a state enterprise at the Kangxi court. 

Completed just before the Emperor’s death, this vast encyclopedia was published in the following reign in 5,020 volumes comprising some 800,000 pages. 

The Complete Tang Poetry (Quan Tang shi), an anthology of nearly 50,000 poems by over 2,200 writers, commissioned by the Kangxi Emperor, was completed in just two years and published in 1707, with a preface by the Emperor.
The original stone tables were made for Qingsheng Miao (The Qingsheng Temple) in Haizhou (now Donghai in the province of Zhejiang in South-eastern China).

To make a rubbing, a sheet of moistened paper is laid on the inscribed surface and tamped (rammed) into every depression (engraved part) with a rabbit 's-hair brush. (By another method, the paper is laid on dry, then brushed with a rice or wheat-based paste before being tamped.) When the paper is almost dry, its surface is tapped with an inked pad.

The paper is then peeled from the stone. Since the black ink does not touch the parts of the paper that are pressed into the inscription, the process produces white characters on a black background. (If the inscription is cut in relief rather than intaglio, black and white is reversed.)

Provenance: From the Oriental collection of Vagn Pedersen.