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A Fashionable Century

A Fashionable Century: Textile Artistry and Commerce in the Late Qing (University of Washington Press, 2020)

Author Rachel Silberstein discusses textile history, craft, and gendered consumption in nineteenth-century China.

key themes
  • Gender and identity
  • Material culture
  • Art market and commerce
  • Dress, textiles, and the body
further reading
  • Daria Berg and Chloe Starr, eds. The Quest for Gentility in China: Negotiations beyond Gender and Class. New York: Routledge, 2007.
  • James Cahill, Pictures for Use and Pleasure: Vernacular Painting in High Qing China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
  • James Cahill, Julia M. White, and Sarah Handler, eds. Beauty Revealed: Images of Women in Qing Dynasty Chinese Painting. Berkeley: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2013.
  • BuYun Chen, Empire of Style: Silk and Fashion in Tang China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019.
  • Sarah Dauncey, “Illusions of Grandeur: Perceptions of Status and Wealth in Late Ming Female Clothing and Ornamentation.” East Asian History 25–26 (2003): 43–68.
  • Fan Jinmin 範金民. Ming Qing Jiangnan shangye de fazhan 明清江南商業的發展. Nanjing: Nanjing Daxue Chubanshe, 1998.
  • Antonia Finnane, Changing Clothes in China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.
  • Grace S. Fong, “Female Hands: Embroidery as a Knowledge Field in Women’s Everyday Life in Late Imperial and Early Republican China.” Late Imperial China 25.1 (June 2004): 1–58
  • I-Fen Huang, “Gender, Technical Innovation, and Gu Family Embroidery.” EASTM (East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine), no. 36 (2012): 77–129.
  • Dorothy Ko, “Bondage in Time: Footbinding and Fashion Theory.” Fashion Theory 1.1. 2003: 3–28.
  • Rachel Silberstein, “Other People’s Clothes: The Second-Hand Clothes Dealer and the Art Dealer in Early Twentieth-Century China.” West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 26.2 (2019).
  • Wu Jen-shu 巫仁恕. Shechi de nüren: Ming Qing shiqi Jiangnan funü de xiaofei wenhua 奢侈的女人: 明清時期江南婦女的消費文化. Taipei: Sanmin Shuju, 2016.
  • Catherine Vance Yeh. Shanghai Love: Courtesans, Intellectuals and Entertainment Culture, 1850–1910. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006.
  • Paola Zamperini, “Clothes That Matter: Fashioning Modernity in Late Qing Novels.” Fashion Theory 5.2 (2001): 195–214.
  • Zhang Ailing 張愛玲 (Aileen Chang), “A Chronicle of Changing Clothes.” positions: east asia cultures critique 11.2 (1943/2003): 427–41.
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