Guangdong Museum
Cantonese ivory carving of nested spinning spheres, on display in a building modeled on its concentric layers.
This guide to the Guangdong Museum in Guangzhou opens with a puzzle: how Cantonese craftsmen carved eleven separate, freely spinning rings from a single unbroken ball of ivory, with no seams or glue. It follows the technique behind what artisans called a ghost-work ball, worked by touch through tiny drilled holes with tools finer than sewing needles, and traces the craft from a stonemason's rattling stone temple ornament to Qing dynasty balls of twenty-five or more layers. A British visitor in 1793 called the technique one of the finest pieces of mechanical art he had seen. The museum's own eleven-layer ball is visible through four small windows cut into its surface.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.