Carvers start commercial, finish imperial

Claim (verbatim)

Carvers start commercial, finish imperial. Bibliographers use the block-carvers' names cut into margin strips merely to date and localize editions; read the same names as careers and they become labor-market data. Official printing projects paid better and audited harder, and recruited proven hands from the commercial sector rather than training novices at state expense. So a carver's first attested appearance should almost never be on an official edition, and multi-edition careers should run commercial-to-official far more often than the reverse — the margins of Song books record a craftsman's cursus honorum.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

Using the standard indices of Song-Yuan carver names, reconstruct per-carver attestation sequences for carvers appearing on three or more dated editions. Primary clause (verdict follows it): among carvers attested on both commercial and official editions, the commercial attestation comes first in at least 75 percent of careers. Secondary: across all indexed carvers, fewer than 10 percent of first attestations fall on Directorate or palace editions.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill: the published carver-name indices — Wang Zhaowen's Guji Song Yuan kangong xingming suoyin and the carver lists in the Zhongguo banke tulu — which record edition, date, and name for each attestation.

Novelty / leakage triage

provisional — model-triaged, shepherd review pending

A provisional first pass authored by the model (Opus), not yet confirmed by the shepherd. It carries the same dated-search requirements as an authoritative verdict but is excluded from every headline figure and cannot underwrite a prediction until a shepherd confirms it. Provisional reading: Adjacent (closely related prior work exists).

The source is established as a bibliographic instrument: the block-carvers' names cut into margin strips are indexed (Wang Zhaowen's Guji Song Yuan kangong xingming suoyin; carver lists in the Zhongguo banke tulu) and routinely used to date and localize editions. Not located: the item's specific LABOR-MARKET reading of the same names as careers -- reconstructing per-carver attestation sequences to show that, among carvers on both commercial and official editions, the commercial attestation comes first in >=75% of careers, and that fewer than 10% of all first attestations fall on Directorate/palace editions. The indices and their dating use are established; the career-trajectory (commercial-to-official) measurement is unrun.

• Wang Zhaowen (comp.), Guji Song Yuan kangong xingming suoyin (Index to Block-Engraver Names of Song and Yuan Printed Editions) — The carver-name index used for dating/localizing editions; the career-sequence labor-market reading is the unrun measurement
• Carver lists in the Zhongguo banke tulu (edition, date, name per attestation) — The kill dataset for the per-carver attestation-sequence reconstruction

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.