Wei's Chinese Puzzles Blog 藝智堂

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2009-10-01T22:21:00.000-07:00

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Chinese Puzzles Exhibition Signs

2009-03-01T17:36:00.000-08:00

These are the signs from our exhibition at the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco from July to October 2008. For readable versions, please view them in my Picasa web album.

View the exhibition signs in Picasa web album.

Chinese Puzzles: Games for the Hands and Mind

2008-09-12T10:47:00.001-07:00

by Wei Zhang and Peter Rasmussen

The book Chinese Puzzles: Games for the Hands and Mind is now available. Part exhibition catalog and part photographic exploration, this beautiful book uses as its subject matter the traditional Chinese puzzles displayed in the Chinese Culture Center’s 2008 exhibition. It is the first book to document the rapidly disappearing forms of handcrafted Chinese puzzles.

Chinese Puzzles: Games for the Hands and Mind was written by Wei Zhang and Peter Rasmussen, who collected the puzzles during thirteen years of travels crisscrossing China and exploring Western antique markets. The forms, textures and colors of the antique puzzles are given new life through the eyes and lens of San Francisco-based painter-photographer-designer Niana Liu.

Order from Amazon.com:
Chinese Puzzles: Games for the Hands and Mind

Chinese Puzzles Exhibition Review 益智遊戲展評論

2008-08-23T14:42:00.000-07:00

from Arts of Asia, Vol. 38, No. 6
by Norman L. Sandfield

I recently had the pleasure to attend an exhibition in San Francisco titled "Chinese Puzzles: Games for the Hands and Mind." While most of its visitors saw the artifacts as a wonderful and diverse collection of old Chinese puzzles, collectors of fine Chinese antiques also recognized them for the rare Chinese porcelains, books, and wood furniture that were present.

This exhibit, at the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco, runs from July 22 through October 11, 2008. But if you miss it there, do not worry. The collectors who have amassed this amazing collection of 1200 antique Chinese puzzles, only a small part of which is on display, have hopes that the show will travel. It will also live on in the catalog to the show, Chinese Puzzles: Games for the Hands and Mind, soon to be available from Paragon Book Gallery in Chicago, and a much larger book on Chinese puzzles that they are still at work on.

In only a dozen years, Chinese-born collector Wei Zhang and her husband Peter Rasmussen have quietly acquired a large, diverse and well-documented collection of Chinese puzzles, only a few of which are familiar to western collectors.

There are more than 150 puzzles on display in the show, with the oldest items on exhibit being from the Ming dynasty: a blanc de chine "fairness cup" (gong dao bei) and a brass paperweight made in the form of four boys sharing two heads. The largest puzzle is a specially commissioned six-piece wood burr puzzle measuring 33" x 33" x 33" that was made in China and was modeled after an antique Chinese burr puzzle also on display. Tangram sets, puzzle locks, puzzling images of the "four-happiness" boys, puzzle vessels, wire puzzles, and more, are shown along with artistic images of them in old Chinese prints, books and photographs.

The museum quality show is accompanied in the galleries by related "hands-on" puzzles for children of all ages to play with. And stay and play they do! On the day that I visited the gallery, dozens of people had come to a special Puzzle Party, where hundreds of modern puzzles were out on the tables for all to try. Even more special was the unexpected Chinese visitor who had come to the show, then gone home to get some pliers, wire cutters, and some wire. He came back to make his own copies of the nine linked rings and related "ingenious rings" puzzles for his own pleasure later. He had never done this before, but his interest was like other Chinese visitors to the show who remembered when the nine linked rings was a favorite puzzle in their childhoods in China.

One of the accompanying videos demonstrates how some of the ceramic puzzle vessels work, and a beautiful half-hour-long video documents the past and present state of puzzles in China and the role that Wei and Peter have played in their resurgence. This exhibit demonstrates their love and passion for this interesting, but relatively unknown, art form.

Norman L. Sandfield is a well-known antique dealer, puzzle collector and expert on Chinese ceramic puzzle vessels. His website is www.internetsuke.com.

Puzzle Vessels Video 益智酒具

2008-08-07T17:48:00.000-07:00

We made this short video clip for our San Francisco Chinese Puzzles exhibition.
It ran on a monitor next to the displays of antique puzzle vessels 益智酒具.
The video shows how a bottom-filling pot and a fairness cup work.

Chinese Media Reports 中文媒體

2008-07-27T10:37:00.000-07:00

中國傳統益智遊戲展受到了舊金山灣區媒體的關注。
International Daily News 國際日報 7/22/2008
CRI Online 國際在線 7/24/2008
KTSF News 電視新聞 7/22/2008

Media: Jon Carroll's Column 專欄報道

2008-07-27T10:22:00.000-07:00

On July 15, 2008, popular columnist Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle published a column about the Chinese Puzzles exhibition and announced that it would open "next Tuesday" (July 22). However people started arriving on July 15 while we were still busy installing it! Some visitors came long distances, so we managed to give them a quick "preview."
Read Jon Carroll's article, Ingenious Pieces.

San Francisco Exhibition Opening 中國傳統益智遊戲展開幕

2008-07-27T08:44:00.000-07:00

Chinese Puzzles: Games for the Hands and Mind opened on July 22, 2008, at the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco. The following photos were taken by Michael Goff, Frank Jang and Qin Zhu.

Gallery views. View Picasa slideshow. 展厅照片

Opening night photos. View Picasa slideshow. 开幕剪影

Hands-on activities at the opening. View Picasa slideshow. 动手动脑

Chinese Puzzles: A Video Documentary 中國古代益智遊戲：春节央视十台节目

2008-07-08T17:05:00.000-07:00

These two videos are excerpted from a program that aired on national television in China on Chinese New Year in 2008. The program was in Chinese, so I added the English subtitles. The first video is about Linked Rings Puzzles, and the second one is about Burr and Sliding Block Puzzles. The man you see below is Ruan Genquan, inventor of many "ingenious rings" puzzles.

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