Skip for Joy
2005
Inkjet on sumi-e paper
11.25 x 20 inches
Dragon scale or Whirlwind binding
5 copies
Skip for Joy celebrates words by giving the reader extended sections of Roget's Thesaurus for selected concepts. This form of binding is sometimes called xuanfeng zhuang (“fluttering in the wind” or whirlwind binding). Although the exact date of the first dragon scale binding is not known, scholars suggest that it was probably during the late Tang dynasty (618-907 AD).1 In the evolution of Chinese books, this binding represented the transition from the scroll to thread bound books. An extant historical example of this binding is a copy of the Qieyun in the Palace Museum in Beijing.
© 2023 Rutherford Witthus