It is hard to write down reactions to a dictionary. We do not read dictionaries, but rather collect the right tools from them for all our various mining ventures.

To that end, the Dictionary of Art is amply stocked with things we need as specialists and ignoranti. Lacking, however, is more general guidance around familiar broad terms of reference in distant surroundings. Not all contributors to the Chinese section, for instance, translate the key terms of their subjects and thereby reveal the differences between superficially similar phenomena in the widely separated European and Asian contexts. An excellent account of glass in China fails to mention that three distinct terms for glass (boli, liuli, and liao) have survived, and that their origins in Sanskrit, Iranian languages and native Chinese etymology are still vigorously debated.

The Japanese section on sculpture presents its subject in a much wider scope than its counterpart for China. This is almost certainly a reflection of centuries of deeper Japanese appreciation of sculpture and a much more committed modern scholarship. The Japanese section discusses sculpture in wood, stone, lacquer and bronze, although it ignores an intriguing fashion for the massive use of silver for lifesize statues of the 8th century. The Chinese pages assume, however, that we are concerned primarily with stone sculpture, but neither this nor the Japanese word for sculpture combines definitions of two distinct working methods, namely "carving" (Ch. diao, Jap. cho) and "modelling" (Ch. su, Jap. so) for the different uses of wood, stone or clay.

The history of Chinese sculpture is quite well documented, yet the dictionary states that "there are few records or texts on sculpture similar to those dealing with other major arts." Certainly there are no lengthy treatises on sculpture to compare with the reams of commentary on paintings by Chinese, Korean and Japanese literati, but that is hardly surprising since stonemasons or model-builders had no business publishing their views on sculpture. Still, many sculptures are inscribed with details concerning their commission and date, and Buddhist canonical sources supplement these details with the histories of particular iconographies and their traditional regions.

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Most unhelpfully, the dictionary characterises the development of Chinese sculpture as a seamless progress of gradually improving productions. Commenting on the famous Northern Qi (ad 550-577) life-size Amitabha triad, now located in the University of Pennsylvania, the dictionary remarks: "For their time, (they) are extremely well executed." On the contrary, they are arguably the masterpieces of medieval figural stone sculpture, and their chronological position should tell us quite simply that what followed, at least in China, seldom matched these triumphs of a short period of artistic brilliance.

More alarming cliches abound in a section for the prestigious art of calligraphy. The origins of writing are imputed to the fifth millennium bc, although the same passage later states correctly that the earliest evidence dates to the late second millennium bc. In a familiar oversight, the scope of calligraphy is barely defined, and it is left to a contributor in the section on Chinese bronzes to make the important observation that bronze inscriptions of 1200 BC are the earliest specimens of calligraphy.

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Outside East Asia, many writers on calligraphy prefer to restrict their subject to writing with brush and ink, but stone and metal have played an undisputed formative role in the aesthetics of Chinese, Japanese and Korean writing. Ironically too, many of the earliest ink-written masterpieces have survived only as epigraphs or metal casts. There are no guiding signs, but worshippers of the inkstone will feel richly rewarded by a visit to the Dictionary of Art's section on Chinese coins, which considers some of China's greatest handwriting used on money.

Oliver Moore is curator, department of oriental antiquities, British Museum.