The Porcelain Tower of Nanjing and Three Chinese Pagodas
The Porcelain Tower of Nanjing and Three Chinese Pagodas
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The artwork
Top left, the tower with little bells hanging from the corners of every roof is the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, which Europe came to know through a drawing like this one, and which was razed to the ground in 1856. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.
- The Porcelain Tower of Nanjing and three pagodas, within an engraved frame.
- In a library or above a sofa, the towers lift the whole wall.
- A gift for anyone who has been to China or collects porcelain.
Behind this view is a drawing by Johan Nieuhof, steward of the embassy the Dutch East India Company sent to the Emperor of China: in 1656 the Dutch travelled up rivers and canals from Canton to Beijing, some 2,400 kilometres. The embassy failed: the emperor allowed one visit every eight years. But Nieuhof had orders to draw cities and temples just as he saw them, and his book, published in Amsterdam in 1665, gave Europe its first faithful images of China, and a great appetite for chinoiserie. The tower, commissioned by the Yongle Emperor in the early fifteenth century, was about 79 metres tall and clad in white porcelain bricks.
This plate comes from La Galerie agréable du monde, the collection of views that Pieter van der Aa published in Leiden in 1729, with the four scenes printed inside a separately engraved frame. Top right is the pagoda of Teywanmiao, in Shandong; below, a pagoda near the village of Sinkocien and the eight-sided tower of Linqing, “90 cubits high”, which Nieuhof drew too and which, unlike the one in Nanjing, still stands. The copy reproduced here is kept in the David Rumsey Map Collection at Stanford.
On the shelves of a home library or above a sofa, it is a gift for anyone who has been to China and for collectors of porcelain. Top left, every roof of the tower still has its bells.
Unique quality material
Print on handmade Amalfi paper
Sheet size: 29 x 42 cm (11.4 x 16.5 in)
With frame: 31 x 44 cm (12.2 x 17.3 in)
Material: artwork printed on very fine handmade Amalfi paper with deckled edges
Frame: dark brown with gold fillet, handmade, with glass
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