Lydia Chen (1) (1940–)
Author of Chinese Knotting
About the Author
Image credit: photo by 莊靈
Works by Lydia Chen
The Complete Book of Chinese Knotting: A Compendium of Techniques and Variations (2007) 53 copies, 2 reviews
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1940
- Gender
- female
- Country (for map)
- China
Taiwan, ROC - Birthplace
- Loching, Chekiang, China
- Places of residence
- Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
- Education
- National Chung Hsing University (BS, Agricultural Chemistry)
- Occupations
- instructor
- Organizations
- Shih Chien College of Home Economics
- Short biography
- [from Chinese Knotting]
Born in Loching, Chekiang, in 1940, Lydia Chen received her Bachelor of Science degree in agricultural chemistry from National Chung Hsing University in 1963. Her interest in traditional knotting was born when her father-in-law, Chuang Shang-yen, the Deputy Curator of the National Palace Museum, encouraged her to learn how to tie a few, simple knots from an elderly Museum custodian. From this modest beginning, she went on to master the art, first learning the 13 knots in ECHO magazine, and later figuring out how knots ornamenting the antiques she hunted down were tied. She taught knotting at the Shih Chien College of Home Economics from the fall of 1978 through the spring of 1980, and she has seven exhibitions of her own knotwork -- three in Taipei and one in New York, Korea, and Singapore respectively. She is today the nation's foremost authority on traditional Chinese decorative knotting.
Members
Reviews
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Statistics
- Works
- 3
- Members
- 298
- Popularity
- #78,715
- Rating
- 4.2
- Reviews
- 5
- ISBNs
- 15
- Languages
- 2
Remember: outer loop is, in fact, inner loop, and compound looks like it should be complex instead
WRT the translation and layout:
As with the translations of Lydia Chen's previous books, the illustrations and the content are the same. The pictures may be resized or moved around slightly for better flow with the different language. In this instance, there are at least 3 cases where the wrong picture is matched incorrectly to the text, but not in a particularly fatal manner. It mostly seems to be a case of either rushing (this book did come out fairly quickly after the translation of the 2nd book) or the person doing the work being somewhat careless and not paying attention to what they were doing. Some of the process pictures are smaller, but not too dramatically so, so that a knot may fit on one page instead of 2. Some of the smaller pictures have been enlarged... and not from a better source file. The original 220 page book is now 155, although no content has been removed.
The text itself was never looked at by an editor (at least not an English speaking one).
As you can't take a book and stuff it into babelfish (well, unless you want to OCR it first to introduce even more fun mangling of the text), a translation for Anglophones is very welcome. It is better than a machine translation, but even a brief going over by a native English speaker would no doubt have improved the proceedings tremendously. Editing by someone who was reading for comprehension would have removed some rather dramatic errors. Still, there are no mind-flaying squids involved, and it takes less effort to decode than Chinese characters for most English readers.
The Sauvastika knot as been retranslated as the Buddha knot. I don't think this is an improvement.
Conclusion:
56 new knots. 56 entirely new variations on the core 11 which had been expanded to 13 in the second book and to 14 in this book. Complete layout diagrams and process instructions for each (new) knot. A nice notation for the "pulled and wrapped knots" (eg. cloverleaf and pan chang). A funkier notation for mat knots (eg. double coin/carrick bend).
There is a history of Chinese knots that is an expansion of her article found in "History and Science of Knots" ed. Turner & Griend including many dates that the SCAers will no doubt find useful.
With the caveat that I am a person who has bought whole books for just one new knot or a new way to tie an "old" knot, I say get this book. You will not regret it.… (more)