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A Stone Buried and Unearthed Again: The Xi’an Nestorian Stele, Christianity in China 800 Years Before the Jesuits

The stele standing in the Stele Forest of Xi’an — the ‘Daqin Stele.’ Erected near Chang’an in Tang China in 781 according to its inscription, this stone records about 150 years of the history of Jingjiao (the Church of the East) in Chinese and Syriac. From its burial around the Huichang persecution to its reappearance some 780 years later, we follow — with a source-critical eye — the East Asian Christian history that a single stone revived.

Carving Out Earth and Filling It Back In: The Story of Sanggam Celadon, Invented by Goryeo Potters

구름과 학 무늬를 흑백 상감으로 새긴 고려청자 매병

The sixty-nine cranes carved on the Kansong Art Museum’s National Treasure ‘Celadon Maebyeong with Inlaid Cloud and Crane Design’ are not painted with a brush but patterns made by carving out clay and filling it back with other clay. We trace the tenacity of Goryeo potters who began with imitation and perfected the distinctive beauty of bisaek and sanggam—through the kilns of Gangjin and Buan and on into buncheong ware after the decline.