Chinese Calligraphy: From Pictograph to Ideogram: The History of 214 Essential Chinese/Japanese Characters

by Edoardo Fazzioli

Book Overview

Written Chinese can call upon about 40,000 characters, many of which originated some 6,000 years ago as little pictures of everyday objects used by the ancients to communicate with one another. To... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0896597741
• ISBN13: 9780896597747
• Release Date: October 1987
• Publisher: Abbeville Press
• Length: 251 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.7" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Essential book for learning Characters

This book does a great job introducing the 214 radicals showing their evolution from pictographs to the present day characters. It shows stroke order, gives a short description of the character placing in a cultural context and then shows it in a nice 9-section grid allowing you to practice it at home. This book won't teach you Chinese but it will be a valuable addition to any course of study and provides a good grounding as part of your Chinese studies. Once your Chinese progresses you can begin to learn different styles of calligraphy and elevate your technique to a new level, but as they say "a journey of a thousand li starts with one step". The most important thing when learning Chinese is practice, practice, practice. If you write every character in this book 100 times you'll have begun to build a foundation that will serve you well.

Best Chinese Book of 2006

Beautiful written characters combined with excelent text and funny image. Good for both students and teachers !

... if you know what you're doing.

I was ecstatic to find this book! It is more than just a dictionary reference with cut-and-dry Pin Yin to English translations. For each of the 214 radicals, you get a nice story explaining the history of the radical along with illustrations of the character's evolution from ancient pictographs to its current form. There is also a step-by-step demonstration on how the strokes are arranged including what order and what stroke (if they do not already come naturally to you). And if all that weren't enough, each page has short list of characters that use a particular radical so you can see the radicals in action. This book is definitely useful if you are fascinated by the cultural depictions in traditional Chinese writing. You will be learning things even literate Chinese folks don't know. However, this book probably won't help you much if you are an absolute beginner. For best results, you should at least have a working knowledge to build off of.

A complete history of all 214 essential calligraphic letters

Chinese Calligraphy by Edoardo Fazzioli provides a complete history of all 214 essential Chinese and Japanese calligraphic letters. Highly recommended for a specialized audience of college-level students in either language or art.

Unveiling the intricacies of Chinese characters

If you respond to the beauty of Chinese calligraphy then this book is an enlightening introduction. Having no formal background in the subject, I can't debate the merits of Fazzioli's scholarship, but for aesthetic reasons I give it five stars.