Gesterkamp L (2021)
Publication Type: Other publication type
Publication year: 2021
Publisher: Wiley Online Library
An artisan in China was a craftsman or woman skillful in decorating objects. Because Chinese artisan production was labor intensive, modular techniques and division of labor was devised already at an early stage. A bureaucracy of official was needed to calculate, supervise, and control the artisan workforce and materials. Artisans could receive a two-year training to became a state artisan in a government workshop. Artisans consisted of both men and women, and in some crafts women outnumbered men. Although not officially allowed, many woman artisans worked as conscripts in state projects. The social status of artisans was low and followed the traditional division of the Four Classes of People: scholar, farmer, artisan, merchant. The artisan class was regulated by legal statutes, which stipulated the conscript service, taxes, mutual responsibilities, and fines. The Zhuangzi is the only early philosophical work in which artisans are revered and, because of their skills, portrayed as having achieved a deep insight in nature. Painters were the only type of artisans who achieved a high status in Chinese society, and whose biographies were recorded in treatises on painting. The artisan-painter and the scholar-official painter had different social backgrounds, causing a divide in later times.
APA:
Gesterkamp, L. (2021). Artisans (The Encyclopedia of Ancient History: Asia and Africa). Wiley Online Library.
MLA:
Gesterkamp, Lennert. Artisans (The Encyclopedia of Ancient History: Asia and Africa). Wiley Online Library, 2021.
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