or even burned for fuel. Ecke and Sickman walked or rode by donkey through many parts of China in search of architecture and furniture. Ecke's taste had been shaped by the Bauhaus movement in the Germany of his youth and its call for utilitarian beauty. One historian of art notes that he was "naturally attracted to the minimally decorated geometric forms and subtle beauty of what has become known as Ming-style furniture or classical Chinese furniture," that is, hardwood pieces in the "Ming-style," not necessarily furniture made in the Ming dynasty. These foreign scholars wrote the first books on what came to be known as Chinese "classic furniture." Ecke faced significant problems preparing his research in wartime. There were few reference works to rely on, little money for research assistance, travel was dangerous, and printing resources few. Ecke took apart and measured the furniture in his own collection to give detailed drawings of its construction. Photographs, some full-page, and drawings by Ecke's collaborator Professor Yang Yue, show the construction of beds, chairs, tables, wardrobes, wash stands, clothes racks and other domestic items. Chinese Domestic Furniture in Photographs and Measured Drawings was published in a limited portfolio edition of 200 copies in Beijing in 1944, then reprinted as a standard book by Tuttle in 1962 and Dover Publications in 1985. Kirkus Review The book was influential in its choice of topic and manner of treatment. The classical style of furniture came to dominate the tastes of American collectors after the war partly because of this Bauhaus influence which Ecke and other scholars trained in Europe conveyed. Ecke's final book, Chinese Painting in Hawai'i, written with his wife, said one scholar, was far more than a catalog of the museums holdings, but what another reviewer called a "monumental work" and in itself an "introduction to the study of Chinese painting." In 1991, the First International Symposium on Chinese Ming Domestic Furniture was held in Beijing in Ecke's memory. Publications See also Liang Sicheng Notes Citations Sources External links Chinese Domestic Furniture (review) Tom Sontag, Wood Central Gustav Ecke WorldCat Authority Page. Ecke, Gustav Classical Chinese Furniture Articles 1896 births 1971 deaths Academic staff of Xiamen University American art curators American art historians American sinologists Historians of China Historians of East Asian art History of furniture Academic staff of Tsinghua University Academic staff of Fu Jen Catholic University Writers from Hawaii German emigrants