Yi zhi tu [I-chih t'u, Increase-knowledge puzzle, Tangram]

Tong Yegeng [T'ung Hsieh-keng]

Publication Date: 1878

About this Item

Approx. 10.5" x 5". Traditional Chinese double-leaved thread binding, in two sections, contained within wooden boards with ties. Woodblock-printed on mulberry paper, extensively illustrated with woodcut diagrams. Some foxing and staining, mainly confined to the beginning and end of each volume, but otherwise in good overall order. A treatise of two chapters in two volumes on a Chinese puzzle-game using fifteen pieces. The 15-piece puzzle is a development of the more familiar 7-piece tangram, known in Chinese as Qi qiao ban [Ch'i-ch'iao pan, Seven-Board of Cunning], the individual pieces in the extended puzzle being more varied in shape, some with curved edges. Tong Yegeng (1828--1899), a native of Shanghai, invented the 15-piece tangram in 1862 along the lines of the traditional 7-piece version, and his five children made various shapes with it. It was made into a book and published in Hangzhou in 1878. "The two volumes contain a large number of pictures made up from the fifteen pieces. Some are straightforward outlines of single objects, while others are complete pictures, very much in the traditional style of Chinese painting, and with a typically Chinese choice of subject-matter -- a pavilion in the moonlight, a man asleep in a drifting boat, and so on. As is typical in Chinese paintings, an appropriate poetic quotation is written in one corner of the picture. Unlike the diagrams in the Chinese tangram books of the early nineteenth century, the illustrations in these two volumes are carefully and pleasingly drawn." [Ronald C. Read, Tangrams: 330 Puzzles. Dover, 1965, p. 81].

Seller Inventory # ABE-041

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Yi zhi tu [I-chih t'u, Increase-knowledge puzzle, Tangram]
• Publication Date: 1878
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good