Album of a Dozen Chinese Watercolors on Pith Paper, with a miscellany of subjects

Cloth. Very Good. N.d., circa 1900. Oblong, 13 by 17.5 cm. With a label on the FEP from the store Sing Fat & Co., which was located in San Francisco. Based on this label, we assume that the album was created on the later end of such albums. These albums were popular souvenirs for visitors and tourists to China, and as evident here, came to be sold in the U.S. itself, not requiring distant travel for the American, who might have perceived the album as a souvenir of Chinatown. Each of the watercolors is framed by mounted cloth strips, as opposed to the more usual paper strips, and there are a variety of colored patterns to these strips. This particular album presents a gallimaufry of subject matter. Eight of the paintings are genre scenes of Chinese life, with some emphasis on women's activities; one painting is a river and shore panorama -- this is the most unusual of all the paintings and also painting types; one painting is of a ship; one painting is of butterflies and flowers; and one painting is of birds and tree branches. The condition of the paintings is various. Virtually never does one encounter these paintings, with their very fragile and delicate paper, without some damage. The panorama painting has a irregularly shaped chunk of loss -- 3 by 2 cm at the tallest and widest. The butterflies have a loss about penny sized. The ship has two losses, both smaller but a bit disconcerting. And one genre scene has a nearly straight fracture across the center length-wise. These are in addition to other smaller cracks and tiny pinpoint losses affecting the other paintings. The silk cover has fabric loss. One page is loose. Still an appealing album with a few outstanding paintings for an album of this type.