Description:
Chinese gouache image of four men operating a rope clutch press, a device used primarily for pressing tobacco and making paper in browns, oranges, red, green, blue, pink, and white. The wooden press includes a horizontal press-beam that is pulled down on the tobacco with a rope and windlass; workmen turn the windlass by pulling down the long wooden levers. The man leaning over in the rear cuts or shreds tobacco with a sharp plane. A shopkeeper with well-stocked shelves of merchandise, including woven basket, bowls, storage jars and bottles, looks on from behind the sales counter. This image of tobacco pressing and cutting was probably part of an album of images related to Chinese occupations. Albums and individual images of professions proved popular for the Western market. Augustine Heard, a China trade merchant from Ipswich, Massachusetts, owned three albums of drawings, each containing 120 illustrations identifying the 360 professions. The tobacco cutter is typically included as one of the professions, although rarely did the illustration show the entire shop with the tobacco press. Farmers in Yanzhou in the Shandong Province began to plant tobacco in the mid-17th century; as smoking became widespread, the cultivation of tobacco in China rapidly expanded in the 18th and 19th centuries. Peasants dried the leaves in their households, then sold bundles of tobacco leaves to merchants who had them graded. The leaves either sold as "raw tobacco" to those smokers who preferred that form, or went for processing which involved removing ribs, shredding, and adding aromatic substances and oil. Shredding and pressing tobacco reduced its bulk, and rendered it ready for the long-distance trade.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2003.45 |
