Chinese Toggles

Rare objects from one of the world's only major collections



This book introduces the understudied cultural artifact of the Chinese belt toggle, known as zhuizi (坠子). Similar to their better-known Japanese counterparts, netsuke, these small carved ornaments offer a rare glimpse into everyday life in early modern China.

Toggles were a feature of traditional Chinese garments from the seventeenth century but were scarcely collected. A collaboration between the Powerhouse Museum and Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney, this publication reveals one of the world's largest collections of these extraordinary objects.

More than personal accessories, toggles were wearable symbols, embodying Chinese folk traditions and cultural beliefs. Today, they can speak to three hundred years of Chinese culture across various levels of society. These intricately carved miniatures display the finesse of traditional craft skills through a broad range of materials from jade, ivory, and amber to wood, glass, and seeds.

Chinese Toggles: Culture in Miniature combines curatorial and scientific analysis of the objects' histories and materials by art historians, archaeologists, scientists, and curators. Edited by the curators of an exhibition of the same name, the book allows a larger audience to engage with these unique objects, pairing academic enquiry with detailed photographic documentation of both the exhibition itself and the catalog of eighty toggles.