周嘉胄

Zhou Jiazhou was a literatus of the Ming dynasty. Little is known about his life: his birth and death years, native place and official career cannot be reliably established, and public sources are limited. Modern readers know him mainly through his surviving works. Four of his works are held in this collection, centered on mounting and incense lore and touching on traditional material culture. Among them, Zhuanghuang zhi discusses the procedures, materials and connoisseurship of mounting paintings and calligraphy in plain, practical prose, and is regarded as an important document of traditional Chinese mounting craft. Xiangcheng compiles incense manuals, formulas and related anecdotes from earlier dynasties; rich in content, it is a foundational source for the study of traditional incense culture. The other titles, the Collected Works on Ancient Chinese Material Culture and its Incense Classic, focus on organizing and popularizing traditional material culture. Zhou's writing emphasizes practical detail and documentary compilation, with careful textual work, and has influenced later connoisseurship of painting and calligraphy as well as incense studies; his works are often classed under Eastern philosophy and culture.