Album of Illustrated Cotton Production and poems composed by the Qianlong Emperor

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1765, Fang Guancheng (1698–1768), viceroy of Zhili (present-day Hebei province), presented the Qianlong Emperor with a set of sixteen paintings of cotton production. Recognizing the series as an important achievement of local agriculture, the emperor composed poems for each of the paintings. The images and poems became designs for imperial works of art in various media, including jade, porcelain, and ink cake. This jade album is a concise version that combines the original sixteen paintings into ten pages.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art