Strange stones - Brief Article

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 1999 by Alfred Mayor

Some see a menagerie in the clouds. Others imagine demons dancing in the flames. The class of Chinese known in earlier centuries as scholars found the entire universe in guai shi (strange stones). According to the oldest surviving manual on the subject, Du Wan's Stone Compendium of Cloudy Forest, compiled in the early twelfth century. "The purest essence of the energy of the heaven earth world coalesces into rock. It emerges, hearing the soil. Its formations are wonderful and fantastic. Some with cavernous cliffs, revealing their interior; some with peaks and summits in sharp-edged layers....Within the size of a fist can be assembled the beauty of a thousand cliffs."

As the Taoist paradises were mountain peaks, it stands to reason that strange stones were charged with particular significance in China. Beginning in the later Northern Song dynasty (960-1127), collecting strange stones became the preoccupation of the aristocracy and the literati, and a fitting adjunct to the four necessary accomplishments: poetry calligraphy, painting, and music, especially playing the zither like instrument called a qin.

The book in question here is the catalogue of an exhibition of strange stones (called spirit stones by Stephen Little, the author) that were collected by Ian Wilson and his wife Susan and shown recently at the Art Institute of Chicago. Ian Wilson proclaims himself "a confirmed petrophile [for whom] collecting spirit stones is essentially an adventure of the mind. There is little in the way of provenance to guide one....in the end it all comes down to the spiritual, contemplative, or tactile aspects of the individual stone--whether the stone 'talks' to one or not."

For the Wilsons, collecting strange stones led to collecting prints and drawings of them from all angles, roots carved to resemble them, wooden brush holders carved to resemble them, and even a nineteenth-century rock crystal simulacrum of a strange stone. The stones are mounted on beautifully carved and polished wooden stands, often appearing to teeter on their smallest axis for the ideal aesthetic presentation. One of the most unusual stones in the collection is contained in a rosewood box that is inscribed on the top with the name of the stone, Xiao linglong (little openwork), and a description of the eight views embodied in the stone. These are "Small Openwork Peak," "Small Western Peak" (referring to Mount Hua, the westernmost of China's Five Sacred Peaks), "Peak of Myriad Changes," "Joined Stones," "Peak of the Five Elders," "Pearl Ravine," "Piled-up Ravine," and "Layered Clouds." At seven and seven-eighths inches high, Little Openwork is indeed a most compact universe.

This catalogue is splendidly worthy of the collection and a wonderful bargain as well. The double-ply pages have a pale imprint of the Chinese characters for guai shi lapping over the folded edge. The illustrations are printed in duo-tone, lending a wonderful richness to the blacks and grays, and the book is hand bound with string in the traditional Chinese manner. It comes in a wraparound slipcase covered in dark blue cloth secured with ribbons and bone toggles.