Description:
Chinese accordian-style album with 24 gouache and watercolor images of tea production on Chinese paper, which are pasted onto a paper backing with a blue silk border, and the entire volume bound in cardboard covered with a multicolor, brocaded silk. Reading right to left, each image is titled in brown ink in English along the top edge: 1) The Bohea Country, 2) Preparing the ground, 3) Preparing the ground, 4) Watering young tress, 5) A ridiculous story of Monkeys gathering tea, 6) Cutting down old trees, 7) Women churing the tea leaves, 8) Torching the tea, 9) Weighing, 10) Making baskets, 11) Drying & torching, 12) Car[ry]ing baskets & receiving tea in small parcels, 13) Packing, 14) Carrying, 15) Carrying, 16) Carrying by Water, 17) The tea purchaser going from the tea country, 18) Taking of Wild horses & killing one for eating, 19) Making canisters, 20) Making chests, 21) Papering chests, 22) Packing in chests, 23) Marking chests, 24) Taking leave. According to Kee Il Choi, several of the images are pasted onto the book out of order. China has a long tradition of recording the stages of particular production processes. The first albums of this type, made under imperial patronage, illustrated the cultivation of rice and the manufacture of silk. These earlier albums have square formats and a graphic, instructive style derived from Chinese woodblock prints of the late Ming (1368-1644) and early Qing (1644-1911) Dynasties. Cantonese painters, inspired and informed by these prototypes, created albums on the themes of agriculture (tea, cotton, and rice) and industry (porcelain, silk) for their Western customers. These albums were purchased not only for their beauty, but also for the information they provided on Chinese manufactures; before the 1840s, a prohibition on travel meant that very few Westerners had observed tea production firsthand. These albums provided a working (if not completely accurate) knowledge of how tea was produced and transported to Canton.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+56.428 |
