1800s CHINESE BIRDS & FLOWERS~2 ANTIQUE PITH PAINTINGS

Starting about 1825, Westerners in China snatched up artworks depicting local customs, costumes, birds, bees, and flowers. They were usually pretty souvenirs made for the tourist trade, who called them rice-paper paintings from the mistaken notion that their distinctive paper was made of rice.

Pith presumably came into use for painting to satisfy the increasing demand for small, inexpensive and easily transported souvenirs, following the massive growth in the China Trade in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Paintings in oils, on board and canvas were costly and difficult to carry home. Pith paintings were inexpensive, light, easy to pack and gave the pictures some protection on the long voyage home. Because many were sold in albums and protected from the light, they retain their bright colors to this day.

The elegant paper is from the pith of the Tetrapanax papyriferum plant, a member of the ginseng family. Native to the swampy forests of Taiwan and southern China, it is a shrub or small tree, usually 4 to 12 feet tall but capable of reaching 30 feet, and its wood is hard and dense. But a worker with rare skill and a big knife can slice its pith into a sheet of smooth, bone-white paper. The paper has great strength in its youth, and when damp may be stretched and folded into almost any shape, which is why Chinese for centuries have used pith paper to make artificial flowers and decorative hairpins. It absorbs watercolors or tempera readily, creating a relief texture with a velvety visual depth.

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