HU, Zhengyan.

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Shizhuzhai jianpu ("Decorated Letter Papers from the Ten Bamboo Studio"). The exquisite 1952 Rongbaozhai facsimile edition of this famous 17th-century catalogue, which has served as a primer for generations of Chinese artists since the Qing dynasty. Jan Tschichold, who brought the work to the attention of a western audience in 1970, called this edition "the finest issue. An incomparably perfect facsimile" (quoted by Auckland). Chinese jianpu ("letter papers") were sheets of decorated stationery made for literati and poets. Decorated Letter Papers from the Ten Bamboo Studio was first printed in 1633 by Hu Zhengyan (1584-1674). Hu was a publisher, calligrapher, and artist who produced and sold letter papers at his Ten Bamboo Studio in Nanjing. The collection contains hundreds of exemplars drawn from the work of 50 artists (including Zhao Mengfu, Wen Zhengming, Shen Zhou, and other luminaries) and is categorized by subjects such as dragons, rocks, and orchids. For the next 200 years, together with the Jieziyuan huapu (Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden), it shaped the development of Chinese and Japanese painting and woodblock aesthetics.In the 1930s, given the abject rarity of imperial-era printings, the catalogue was reissued by Lu Xun and the historian Zheng Zhenduo. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, a reinvigorated Rongbaozhai recut the Lu-Zheng edition while remaining faithful to the printing techniques of Hu's original. Here, the illustrations are printed

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