Description

(Bilingual Edition: English / German)

The publication presents the entire collection of printing plates
depicting battles of the Chinese emperor that are still in existence.
They show scenes of Chinese military campaigns between 1755 and 1828. Of
the originally eighty-eight printing plates, only thirty-seven are
still known today, thirty-four of them in the Ethnological Museum in
Berlin.

The book tells the history of the plates'provenance and
describes the history of copperplate engraving in China. The process in
which the printing plates were created and the motifs found in the
pictures of battles are also explained. The magnificent copper plates,
which are part of the exhibition in the Wang Shu Room of the Humboldt
Forum, bear witness to the history of missionaries in China, the
military campaigns and politics of the Chinese emperor, the
transnational interrelation of culture and craft, and ultimately the
craft of copperplate engraving itself.