Completed in 961 CE, the Sanli tu represents the oldest extant illustrated guidebook on the ritual classics, focusing on the material objects used in customs, from imperial rites to mourning and burial traditions for the elite. Neatly organized like an encyclopedia, the tome dedicates entries to 362 different ritual implements, such as ornate garments, musical instruments, chariots, ladles, and wine goblets shaped like birds.

A number of facsimile pages of it are on view at Bard Graduate Center, where a small but illuminating exhibition curated by François Louis explores the book’s significance and legacy. To bring its pages to life, Design by the Book also pairs spreads with real-life versions of the illustrated objects. Nie’s illustrations of stone chimes (bianqing), for instance, are accompanied by one early-18th-century stone chime that resembles the L-shaped drawing and a heavy bronze bell from the early 12th century.

A professor of Confucian Classics, Nie had received a commission from the first emperor of the Song Dynasty to make illustrations of the mysterious ritual objects described in the San Li, which even provided specific measurements. With a new dynasty, of course, came the need for new court objects. He designed many of these illustrations himself, but others he may have derived from the work of an earlier scholar, Zheng Xuan. Nie’s Sanli tu entered the national curriculum, and it remained a standard design manual for ancient material culture for over 150 years.