An easy-to-follow guide to learning the art of calligraphy, with 25 gorgeously photographed projects that use calligraphy to make beautiful gifts and home décor. Calligraphy and hand lettering have surged in popularity as people rediscover traditional handicrafts as a creative outlet and way to relax. Unlike other hand lettering books, The Gift of Calligraphy shows you how to use your calligraphy skills to create invitations, wall art, wrapping paper, a tote bag, even a calligraphy kit for kids. Maybelle Imasa-Stukuls, calligraphy teacher and author of Belle Calligraphy, brings her signature modern style to this traditional craft. The first quarter of the book provides a primer for creating a simple alphabet and how to find your own personal style of lettering, followed by wonderful projects that will delight your family, impress your friends, and beautify your home, all accompanied by clear step-by-step photography and inspiring shots of the finished pieces.

Chosen by author Elizabeth Gilbert as one of her ten favorite books, Daniel Ladinsky’s extraordinary renderings of 250 unforgettable lyrical poems by Hafiz, one of the greatest Sufi poets of all time More than any other Persian poet—even Rumi—Hafiz expanded the mystical, healing dimensions of poetry. Because his poems were often ecstatic love songs from God to his beloved world, many have called Hafiz the “Invisible Tongue.” Indeed, Daniel Ladinsky has said that his work with Hafiz is an attempt to do the impossible: to render Light into words—to make the Luminous Resonance of God tangible to our finite senses. I am a hole in a flute that the Christ's breath moves through— listen to this music! With this stunning collection of Hafiz’s most intimate poems, Ladinsky has succeeded brilliantly in presenting the essence of one of Islam’s greatest poetic and religious voices. Each line of The Gift imparts the wonderful qualities of this master Sufi poet and spiritual teacher: encouragement, an audacious love that touches lives, profound knowledge, generosity, and a sweet, playful genius unparalleled in world literature.

The Gift captures the Singapore segment of the curatorial project Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories. Focusing on ideas of inter-relation and exchange manifest in history, geography and identity, this catalogue features the works of 15 artists in an examination of how the act of giving is performed, remembered and entangles. Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories is a dialogue between the collections of Galeri Nasional Indonesia, MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and Singapore Art Museum, initiated by the Goethe-Institut. The exhibitions are curated by Anna-Catharina Gebbers, Grace Samboh, Gridthiya Gaweewong and June Yap.

The present collection was written to commemorate the third centenary of the death of the Portuguese Jesuit, Tomás Pereira (1645–1708). Dealing with some of the most decisive and controversial moments in the history of the Jesuit mission in China during the Kangxi era (1662–1722), these essays were produced by an international team of scholars and cover a wide range of topics that reflect a permanent academic interest, in Europe and America as well as in China, in the history of the Catholic mission in China, Sino-Russian diplomacy, the history of Western science and music in China, intercultural history, and history of art. While the names of such missionaries as Matteo Ricci, Adam Schall and Ferdinand Verbiest are well known, Pereira has been relatively neglected, and this volume seeks to redress that imbalance. Pereira was important as a musician and diplomat and was closer to the Kangxi emperor than any other Westerner, something that enabled him to exert considerable influence for the protection of the Chinese Christians and also to further the interests of Portugal in China. However, towards the end of his life he saw his efforts undermined by the damaging consequences of the papal legation to China led by Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon.

Cairo Diary is a riveting historical narrative filled with ancient texts, romance and political intrigue. Best-selling author, Dr. Linda Lambert, recounts the journeys of two women separated by two millennia who are each seeking personal freedom: the Virgin Mary, living with her family in Old Cairo; and Dr. Justine Jenner, a modern-day anthropologist, whose mother is Egyptian and whose father is American. Mary is a reflective, insightful woman who imparts her wisdom to her eight-year old son, Jesus, and chronicles the historic challenges Jews faced in a Roman-Egyptian world. Two thousand years later, Justine arrives in Cairo to take up the work of UNICEF Community Schools for Girls. During a violent earthquake, she becomes trapped in the crypt under St. Sergius Church in Old Cairo, originally the cave that served as the Egyptian home to the Holy Family. When the shaking stops, an ancient book lies at her feet. With the help of a team of Egyptian and French investigators, Justine explores the profound secrets of the codex, which turns out to be the personal diary of the Virgin Mary. What is recorded in this diary threatens the foundation of religious beliefs, beliefs that are revealed to be a finely textured mythology. Dr. Linda Lambert became enthralled with Egypt as a young girl, when her mother enchanted her with tales of her own alleged reincarnation from Egyptian royalty. In 1989, Linda moved to Egypt and began two decades of passionate exploration of this fascinating culture. During a visit to the ancient crypt that is believed to have housed the Holy Family, Linda experienced an epiphany that inspired her to write Cairo Diary her first historical novel. Linda has written several internationally-recognized books in the field of educational leadership. Her seventh book, Women's Ways of Leading was released in 2009, integrating her global work in leadership with feminine and historical themes that take center stage in her novels as well. Dr. Lambert is an experienced administrator, history instructor and international consultant. She is now Professor Emeritus at California State University, East Bay, and lives full time on The Sea Ranch, California, with her husband, Morgan Lambert.

This book takes an innovative approach to one of the great figures of Chinese culture, the writer and painter Wen Zhengming (1470–1559). Renowned as one of the great “scholar painters” of the Ming dynasty, Wen was enmeshed in a complex web of social obligations, his “elegant debts” as he called them, which led to many of his most celebrated works. Using an unprecedented quantity of primary sources for his life and work, Elegant Debts looks at the ways in which social obligation and gift exchange were central to personal and individual identity in the Ming period. The book also examines Wen’s family relationships, his friends, mentors, and pupils, his sense of a distinct local identity, and the interplay of national and regional politics with the achievements of his long life. It uses the insights of a range of scholarship—art history, social and literary history, and anthropology—to show how “self” was constructed in Ming China. In doing so, it makes a major contribution toward a more diverse art history that is less dependent on European conceptions of artists and their work. Craig Clunas has published extensively in the field, and is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading scholars of Ming culture. Featuring many images of the work of one of China’s major painters, this book is accessible to all who are interested in China’s culture and history, as well as to students and scholars of art history and the history of culture.

Traditionally the "Chinese body" was approached as a totality and explained by sweeping comparisons of the differences that distinguished Chinese examples from their Western counterparts. Recently, scholars have argued that we must look at particular examples of Chinese images of the body and explore their intrinsic conceptual complexity and historical specificity. The twelve contributors to this volume adopt a middle position. They agree that Chinese images are conditioned by indigenous traditions and dynamics of social interaction, but they seek to explain a general Chinese body and face by charting multiple, specific bodies and faces. All of the chapters are historical case studies and investigate particular images, such as Han dynasty tomb figurines; Buddhist texts and illustrations; pictures of deprivation, illness, deformity, and ghosts; clothing; formal portraiture; and modern photographs and films. From the diversity of art forms and historical periods studied, there emerges a more complex picture of ways that the visual culture of the body and face in China has served to depict the living, memorialize the dead, and present the unrepresentable in art.

This extensively illustrated primer is the first English edition of Sun's classic 1919 book which explores both the theory and practice of the style, with emphasis on movements and postures. Tim Cartmell's translation provides both a standard by which practitioners can judge themselves and valuable information relevant to all versions of taijiquan. Tim Cartmell has done the American Taijiquan community a great service translating Sun Lutang's books into English.

A balanced, accessible, and thorough history of Jingjiao, the first Christian church in China Many people assume that the first introduction of Christianity to the Chinese was part of nineteenth-century Western imperialism. In fact, Syriac-speaking Christians brought the gospel along the Silk Road into China in the seventh century. Glen L. Thompson introduces readers to the fascinating history of this early Eastern church, referred to as Jingjiao, or the “Luminous Teaching.” Thompson presents the history of the Persian church’s mission to China with rigor and clarity. While Christianity remained a minority and “foreign” religion in the Middle Kingdom, it nonetheless attracted adherents among indigenous Chinese and received imperial approval during the Tang Dynasty. Though it was later suppressed alongside Buddhism, it resurfaced in China and Mongolia in the twelfth century. Thompson also discusses how the modern unearthing of Chinese Christian texts has stirred controversy over the meaning of Jingjiao to recent missionary efforts in China. In an accessible style, Thompson guides readers through primary sources as well as up-to-date scholarship. As the most recent and balanced survey on the topic available in English, Jingjiao will be an indispensable resource for students of global Christianity and missiology.