Chinese Lithophilia
his understanding of this tradition from research, extensive time visiting Chinese gardens, and interacting with leading collectors of Gongshi, or scholar’s rocks. Aware that cross-cultural work always entails translation and construction, he approaches this task pragmatically, for the purpose of deepening his aesthetic, physical, and metaphysical feeling for stone. He was introduced to “Chinese Lithophilia” through Graham Parkes’s work, which Parkes defines as “the Chinese veneration for stone in its natural, unworked state” (75). The susceptibility to simplifying traditions can be seen in Parkes’s statement, which is misleading in a small but significant way. Chinese stones, from scholar rocks to garden stones, are not necessarily in a “natural, unworked state.” Many Taihu stones were carved into dramatic forms and returned to Lake Tai so that traces of the work would be eroded. The widely held idea that Chinese and Japanese traditions centered on “natural, unworked” stones may reflect Orientalist preconceptions. In practice, Euro-American collectors of viewing stones place far more value on the notion that they are “natural, unworked” rocks than their Asian counterparts.
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- The Library of Stoned Thinking Paul A. Harris
