Limited edition print by Fu Hua, depicting a 6th-century poem by Lao Tze

A limited edition print by the calligrapher Fu Hua, made in his ninety-sixth year. The text is attributed to Lao Tze and reads: Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.

The edition was commissioned by The Eventworks, a London consultancy working in conference and internal communication — which is how a sixth-century BC attribution came to be printed for a twentieth-century corporate audience. Provenance of that kind is worth stating rather than hiding: it explains why the piece exists.

The print in context

Laozi (Lao Tze), the traditional author of the Daodejing, is a figure of the sixth century BCE in Chinese tradition, and his short, paradoxical verses have been a subject for calligraphers and painters for two thousand years. A limited-edition print depicting one of them belongs to the long practice of reproducing a scholar’s brushwork for a wider audience — and a print is judged as a work on paper: the quality of the impression, the edition number, the signature, the paper and the condition of the sheet, which is assessed for foxing, toning and handling rather than for the chips and hairlines of a ceramic.

The artist’s signature on this print records his age, 96, in Chinese — a convention of Chinese artists who signed late work with their years as a mark of longevity. We record the title and inscription as they appear and have not independently verified the artist’s biography beyond them. On our old site this was the best-converting page in the catalogue, and the Chinese characters that used to sit in its web address have been removed so that the page can be linked to reliably.

Read more: the scholar’s studio and works on paper.