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Details
A Chinese erotic souvenir album, gouache on pith paper, China, Guangdong region, 19th century.
12 gouache scenes painted on rice paper and mounted on paper (206 x 290 mm) depicting erotic scenes of often acrobatic and sometimes musical intercourse, voyeurism, bondage and foreplay. (Paper sometimes cracked, occasional losses of pigment.) Contemporary red silk binding (lower board with silk detached, upper board with silk semi-detached).
AN INTRIGUING AND RARE EXAMPLE OF AN EROTIC SOUVENIR BOOK likely intended for Western consumption, containing imaginative erotic scenes painted on pith paper, or 'rice paper', which came from the inner pith of the tree Trexapanx Papyrifera (in Chinese 'Tongacao'). Pith paper was introduced in the workshops of Canton in the early 19th century on the instigation of Westerners: its soft, velvety surface was an excellent base for painting in the western way. Erotic pith paper albums were usually of rather low quality, but the present manuscript, with its rich colours and softly rendered figures is a fine exception.
12 gouache scenes painted on rice paper and mounted on paper (206 x 290 mm) depicting erotic scenes of often acrobatic and sometimes musical intercourse, voyeurism, bondage and foreplay. (Paper sometimes cracked, occasional losses of pigment.) Contemporary red silk binding (lower board with silk detached, upper board with silk semi-detached).
AN INTRIGUING AND RARE EXAMPLE OF AN EROTIC SOUVENIR BOOK likely intended for Western consumption, containing imaginative erotic scenes painted on pith paper, or 'rice paper', which came from the inner pith of the tree Trexapanx Papyrifera (in Chinese 'Tongacao'). Pith paper was introduced in the workshops of Canton in the early 19th century on the instigation of Westerners: its soft, velvety surface was an excellent base for painting in the western way. Erotic pith paper albums were usually of rather low quality, but the present manuscript, with its rich colours and softly rendered figures is a fine exception.
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