Paper Trails: Fang Yongbin and the Material Culture of Calligraphy.

Fang Yongbin's (1542–1608) cache of paper-based ephemera—733 notes, invoices, and 190 name cards—now held in the Harvard-Yenching library, discloses the multidimensional expertise of the stationery dealer in late Ming China. This article explores how businessmen from Huizhou prefecture turned to the trade in writing materials to improvise with new forms of cultural entrepreneurship in the late sixteenth century. Introducing the diverse contents of the cache, I demonstrate how Fang's involvement in the sale of desktop tools drew from, and creatively combined literary endeavors, shop-keeping, and artisanal labor. Unsettling discrete conceptions of "scholar," "merchant," and "craftsman," Fang's career reveals how stationery dealers vied to usurp custodianship over the material culture of calligraphy. The Harvard-Yenching cache registers the increasingly powerful influence exerted over the business of culture by those skilled in the making and marketing of writing materials: largely forgotten salesmen whose services made the art of writing possible in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]