Chinese Art. 1 by William Willetts.
 
Chinese Art attempts to relate the traditional forms of China to the social, political, and technological conditions out of which they arose. Each artform has a chapter of its own, where it it is discussed in the context of a particular historical epoch during which, for one reason or another, it reached an especially characteristic stage of development.
 
The chapters are arranged chronologically, so that Chinese Art may be read as a continuous record of four thousand years of Chinese art history. There are 64 pages of plates, numerous tables and maps, and well over 100 line drawings representing several hundred objects.
 
Volume One opens with an account of the geographical background of Chinese society, and of its prehistory. Then follows a chapter on jade, set in the context of late Neolithic China, and one on the art of the ritual bronzes covering the first two historical dynasties - the Shang-Yin and Chou. Lacquer and silk, those two distinctively Chinese art-forms, are described in the setting of Han dynasty China and its trade relations with the Roman Orient.
 
Volume One ends with a discussion of Buddhist sculpture during the period of its most vital artistic achievement - the Six Dynasties and the first half century or so of the