Perspectives in Early Qing-Dynasty Pictures of Tilling and Weaving and Pictures of Cotton

Abstract

This article investigates the earliest formations of technologically-informed 'Pictures of procedures' in the Qing dynasty. These 'Pictures of procedures' are highly didactic set of scenes that are arranged sequentially that serve to illustrate the procedures involved in the production of certain commodities, for example, rice, silk, or cotton cloth. These images often incorporated European geometric or linear perspective, and at times these pictures rejected it. This essay examines the appeal of linear perspective and its relationship to technological imagery found in early Qing 'Pictures of Procedures' and considers motives for its repudiation in other examples of the sequential scene genre. This article initiates a discussion on these types of technologically-informed procedural images in early Qing-dynasty visual culture in order to establish some of the parameters that surrounded the use of geometric perspective in them.